Left Arm Bandit

The Rehearsal Road Race is the OBRA category championship, but it is not a practice race as the name would imply, and is my last race as a Cat 5.   The course was brutal, but I ended up with a 9th place finish.  The first lap was pretty fast.  The pack fractured on some of the steeper stuff, and in the last 300 meters it split into about three groups.  I didn't make the first group but wasn't too worried because the next section was 6 miles of sweeping downhill.  My group, the second one, easily caught the first about 500 meters into the descent.  The descent was fun and easy.  Sitting 5 wheels back you had to do almost no work.  The majority of the dropped riders caught us on the descent.

After awhile I was bored just sitting in, so I took a nice long pull on the front; huge mistake. After my pull I drifted back to get some rest.  About 30 seconds later the road ticked up and the guys on the front attacked.  I was about 20 wheels back, boxed in and had no prayer of going with them.  The field totally shattered. The lead group was made up of 5 or 6 riders and the small groups of 2 or 3.  I got in with a teammate, and we worked together to catch 2 Fred Meyer guys in front of us.  For the majority of the second lap climbing one of the Fred Meyer guys wanted to do all the pulling so we let him.  Sitting on his wheel grinding away. The guy who eventually finished 8th bridged up to us, and we were now a group of 5.

The Fred Meyer dude dropped his chain on the last big climb.  He looked pretty toast when we all went by him, and I didn't see him the rest of the day.  On the downhill section we worked really well together.  30 second pulls on the front then rotating back.  As we passed riders they joined our train.  By the end of the downhill we had about 10 riders in our group.  The rotating pace line was the best pace line I've been a part of in a race situation.  Then after 15-20 minutes of awesomeness it all came crashing down.  We passed some Cat 4 riders and something happened behind me.  I was 4th wheel back and kept up the pace, but the guys behind me suddenly dropped.  The road ticked up a bit, and they never caught back on.  One of the four guys in out group dropped in the first hill, and soon it was just three.

The three of us worked together up the hills about a mile, but on the top of the final hill the third guy had enough and sat up.  Then there was only two of us.  We started the last hill together and then started working on the downhill. Working as a group of 2 is a lot different then working as a group of 10 or even 5.  You don't get nearly as much rest.  We pushed it down the hill and even caught sight of a group of 5 riders ahead of us but simply couldn't catch them.  I think the group of 5 split because we picked off a few solo riders in the last 2 miles.

The finish was uphill and hard.  I sat on my partner's wheel and could see the guy in front of us.  He accelerated in the last 500 meters and I simply didn't have the legs to go with him.  Finishing 9th in the Cat 5's is pretty respectable.  I thought I was going to be much further down.  All and all it was a good day.  We finished off the day by taking a "cool down" lap by doing the course again.

Results are here.