Press Release 3.5.2007

 

Race Report from the Tour De Pickaway County
by Bruce Miller of Seven Hills Cycling Club

DATE: Sat. 3-2-2007
LOCATION: Commercial Point, OH

Today started off decent. I left the house and it was about 45 degrees. I started driving and the temperature kept dropping. By the time I got to Commercial Point the temperature had dropped to 32 degrees. I went through a couple of nasty snow storms, at one point a road had about an inch of snow on it. Then when I was about three miles from the start the road was closed, it had a couple of feet of water over it. I should have took some of this as a sign. Unfortunately I didn’t.

I made it there, registered, changed, all that good stuff. The start finally came. They reduced our race down to four laps, total of 24 miles. That sounded good to me, I need an easy race.

Well the race started, I believe it was underway a full 100 yards before the first attack. At the beginning I felt pretty good. I even helped bridge a gap to the first chase group once. Next thing I knew there was another attack, then another attack, any guesses what came next? You guessed it…….another attack!

I went as hard as I could, eventually I fell off the back. I’m pretty sure it was the second lap. At least I wasn’t the first to fall off the back though. I fought back to the group three times. Each time I was able to recover a full 5 or 10 seconds, then another attack. Finally I came to the realization that if I wanted to race tomorrow I had to throw in the towel. I kept going though, I never quit. I just reduced it to about 90% effort.

I ended up teaming up with a couple of the 3/4 guys and a master. I was in the 4/5 race. I did get to do about 90% of the pulling though to get a little more threshold work. Also got to bs with the others a few minutes. That was nice.

By the time I finished I believe I got a top ten, I’m not going to swear to it though. I’ll find out later this week when the results are posted. The score keeper said he wasn’t sure since the 3/4’s and the 4/5’s all crossed together. I’m not sure exactly how many of the 4/5’s were still together but I don’t believe there were many of them.

Overall, I was dissapointed to be dropped, since it was the first time it’s happened to me. I was happy to get a good work out in though. Gotta look at the positives.

There was one crash. A pickup truck backed out onto the road and a woman hit it. She got a ride in an ambulance back to her car. Amazingly she was able to ride home. Way to go Jamie!

Now I’ll get back to setting here in the hotel burning up. Unfortunately I have the heat turned all the way up trying to dry out my clothes. I had some great pizza, now all I can do is relax until tomorrow morning when I get ready for tomorrow’s race. Hopefully it goes better.  

Congratulations to everyone that finished!