Pescadero RR Report

Photos courtesy of Ken Conley

Our Club, Alto Velo, puts on the Pescadero Coastal Classic every year. A lot of the team was busy helping run the event so a relatively small crew actually raced. Still, Ted, Greg, and Dom are the right guys to field for this hilly road race. Below is Ted Huang's Report

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9 Jun 2007
Team: Ted Huang (5th), Greg Drake, and Dominic Giampaolo

Huge kudos to Bruce Wilford and all of our club volunteers that made this race the smoothest run yet. I heard nothing but accolades from fellow riders.

June 9th, a beautiful day for a Cal Giant group ride with 50 or so other tag-alongs like myself. As usual, the main reason to drive out to Pescadero, besides dropping off the prizes, racing in one of the best run races on an epic course, was the stop afterwards at Duarte's Tavern to buy one of their world famous Olallieberry pies. (What is an Olallieberry you ask?(top secret gov't project that crossed a loganberry w/ youngberry) Our race commenced in sedate fashion, with Cal Giant being nice enough to allow the rest of us a 2km warmup before leading out Patrick Briggs for the 1st prime on Stage Rd. I think that was the start of a break of two (Briggs + BPG). Our own Greg D. being used to double centuries as of late, strung out our field on both the Stage Rd and Haskins climbs as well as the flats (I was too far back to see). Near the end of lap one, a combination of Greg's early pacemaking along with few attacks, caused the pace to quicken and the gap to the two ahead dropped to spitting distance. In the interim, Dominic was able to close gaps to a few moves that we had missed.

Lap 2-Roll the dice
We caught the break and things various small breaks going up the road. In the confusion, I pulled a rookie maneuver and lost my bottle and thus had to obtain two wonderful neutral bottles in the feedzone while Barry Wicks decided to stretch his legs (maybe one). He and a group of 5 held a gap through the climb, forcing me to push the pace in order to keep the gap reasonable by the top. We all came together on the backside.

Lap 3-Excuse Time/This one sticks
A couple groups of 3 - 4 were scattered up the road at this point, and I decided I needed get across and bridged up. We were now a group of 7 or so (w/ 2 Cal Giant sitting on) chasing a group of two. We were altogether at the base of Haskins, but with only a 10 second gap. I surged at the bottom, staying near the front of our break and continued sharing tempo along with a couple of others. At this point, my rear shifting started deteriorating, and I had trouble staying in a gear. 3/4 of the way up, Barry blew by with Chris Lieto of Cal Giant in tow, looking as if he was out for a Sunday spin. I was in the perfect position to accelerate up to them, but it would have required going into the red. I wasn't quite prepared to do that, which proved to be my fatal mistake. When two of the strongest riders in the field go by, you have to follow. Instead, I waited, thinking that we'd catch them on the backside, as they had about 15 seconds on the rest of us at the top.

Lap 3.7 Smothered by Strawberries
Cal Giant effectively smothered any attempts at establishing a bridge move as variety of us including Roman Kilun tried our hand at countering each other's attacks. But to no avail. There were just too many of them and the pack resigned itself to settling for going for third. Meanwhile, with my shifting taking a turn for the worse, I almost crashed out someone behind me when my gears slipped. John Hunt promptly advised me to "go to the back" so I wouldn't crash anyone out. I contemplated turning around at that point (being a couple of clicks from Duartes), but realized that in order to eat an entire pie, would have to ride another lap.

So with visions of deep purple olallieberries percolating through golden crust, I had visions of taking a long death pull once we reached 84. But more gear issues snuffed that stupid idea.

I then attacked on the feedzone hill, trying to achieve a gap before Haskins so I would have more time to select a gear that would stay put. Evan Pickett (Stanford) and another rider joined me. This gave us about a 5 second gap at the base of the hill. Soon after Roman came rolling by with a Cal Giant rider (Max Jenkins). I attached myself to the back of this train, and thankfully, my 39/21 was worked. Roman set this wonderfully uncomfortable tempo up the rest of the climb, and once the 500m sign came into view, I tried shifting up. Bad idea. I promptly went backward as Roman started ramping it up. I watched Max polish off Roman in the distance, and I rolled in for fifth.

All in all, a wonderful day in the saddle, despite the mechanical, which ended up being my own fault.

Lesson learned: replace your cables/housing on DA 10 speed shifters every 4-6 months no matter what. I took my right shifter apart that evening and the cable was down to two strands at the lever, chewed almost all the way through, not allowing the cable to release(due to frayed cable ends). Most Impt: Duarte's freshly bakes pies on Saturdays at midday. Mine was hot!