Press Release 04.12.2006
Weekend Race Report
from teammates of the
WV squad - Mazza Vineyards /Inferno Racing Team
Event: Lynchburg, OH; Sun. 4.09.2006
Women-Cat.1 thru 4
by Amy Dunkin
Well the race yesterday was a blast.
The course was really flat with only one very small hill. Sunny skies temps round 55.
I hung with the group of 12 women for the first lap. I even took a pull. I liked it up front alot better then behind the pack. Only thing to concentrate on when in the front is pedaingl. As we lapped around and went up that small hill right as we crested all of a sudden the girls zoomed past and I was pushing my biggest gears but could not catch.
I am thinking I might need to change my cassette for these races. I have a 23. Probably should get a 25 and could have easily used a 27 here.
Anyhow, I pushed hard and then hit the one stretch of road that was like rough pavement and had some strong cross winds.Not potholed just like not smooth and you felt like your tires were flat. Every time we hit that section the speed would drop about 2 miles per hour. Then we turned onto the smooth asphalt section. Super fast and smooth. I saw another girl who was falling off the pack and I pushed hard and caught up with her at the end of the smooth section. It was Blythe from Team Bolla Wines, I asked her if she wanted to ride alone for the next 17 miles or if she wanted to work together. She wanted to work together. I was glad for that. So we took turns with about 2 min pulls. We were having a good ride then another Cat.3 girl, Kristen from team Dayton-Saturn who had a mechanical caught up to us on the third lap and she worked with us too. It was great. She is really strong.
Kristin Popio-Team Dayton, Blythe Karban-Bolla, & Amy Dunkin-Mazza Winery / Inferno
The only screw up I made was I thought we were doing 5 laps 40miles. It turned out we were only doing 4 laps. So as we turned up that hill which was near the start/finish and Kristen took off I looked at Blythe and said wonder why she wants to ride alone this last lap. Blythe said I think this is the end of the last lap. We looked ahead and could see the other girls on the side by the start / finish. I was lik, oh crap. So I said lets go. I was way too late to trying to catch Kristin, but I sprinted hard and Blythe and I crossed the line very close but I finished just ahead of her. THIS WAS A FUN TIME!!!!!
I did better mentally with the pack riding this time. Just have to keep riding and racing to beat down the head game the wreck wants to play on me. Also, raising my seat post over a half inch this past week also helped my riding power. It was too low last week and I could feel it.
I placed 10th out of 12. All category women class. Time 1:43 for 32.8 miles.
The results have our times way off for 9th, 10th and 11th placings.. Blythe of team Bolla and I have talked via e-mail and our computers and HR monitors show our race time of 1:43.
Cat. 5 class
by Billy Hart
It was pretty much a last minute decision to do this race. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do until about 10:00 Saturday night after 6 beers (not a good idea the night before a race). So I guess the beer made me do it, I was home and in bed by 1:00 am but had to get up at 6:30 to meet Amy at her house.
We made the 3 hour drive to the cornfields of Lynchburg and arrived just before 11:00am. As usual, there was a line to register for the race, it looked like a line for a roller coaster at an amusement park, we were in line 20-30 minutes. Needless to say this put us behind, had to really rush to get ready. To beat it all my new polar computers speed sensor wasn’t working. However, the HRM and cadence was working. There was a two-mile rollout to the official starting line. The temperature at noon was probably right around 57-60 degrees with some wind and a Blue Bird sky. The Cat 5 had about 50 bikes, I expected a large field due to the flat as a pancake course which was 8.1 miles doing 5 laps.
Race start for Cat.5 Men. Billy Hart of Mazza Winery / Inferno Racing beside 7 Hills Racing team member.
Race time!! Right out off the line we were moving fast, and could feel it in my legs, Yikes!! We go a mile or so and have a right turn coming, I can see two guys ¼ mile ahead of the turn. They were our guys, an attack right from the start!! It was great, we make the turn and I locked in and start hammering away to reel them in. My HRM hit 210 during the chase, highest it’s ever been. Of course I had no idea how fast we were going but I know it was fast.
There were a lot of attacks by Team Dayton, they definitely kept things interesting and fun. Other guys mounted attacks as well, so it kept everyone on their toes. On the 3rd lap we could see the cat 4’s ahead of us, we were slowly rolling up on them. There was a van at the end of the cat 4 group, when we got real close to the 4’s the van went around in the left lane, seconds later I hear people yelling, the van stops as well as the cat 4’s. As we slowly went around the van and cat 4’s I see a guy get out of the van and start yelling like at people. No one knew what was going on, there were a few cat 4 guys laying in the road from a crash. I thought maybe the guy in the van hit someone, turns out it was a race official. He tried to stop the cat 4’s so we could go around, unfortunately that caused some guys to crash and a lot of confusion.
Fast forward to the last lap, I had tried to stay up front as much as possible knowing I needed to be in position for a chaotic finish. One mile out the attacks real began, I was on the front left side and another line was on the right. Once we hit the straight away the headwind hit me and my legs died, I had no one to pull off of, I was in the wrong line and shouldn’t have been pulling! The other line pulled ahead and I fell from top 10 to the main group. It started getting messy so I decided to hold my line on the left, closest to grass because I knew there was going to be a crash. Saw some guys making contact with each other and one of them lost control and went down. He took about 10-15 bikes with him. I had to run off the road to avoid some bikes. What a messy end, finished 22nd.
Pictures from : www.teamdaytoncycling.com
Results: Ohio Valley Racing
