The Webcor/Alto Velo Men's Elite Team raced the NorCal district championship road race this past weekend. The team put in a really solid effort in defense of Ted's title. Ted rode strong, as usual, and nearly 3-peated. Former Webcor rider, James Mattis, took the win. Below is Ted's Report.
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District RR Pro 1/2
10 laps - 105 miles
Place: 2nd (due to inspiration from teammates), Dominic and Greg finishing as well
Teammates: Maria(impeccable feeds), Dominic, Rob, Greg Davis, Matt Beebe, Matt Morenzoni, Tore, James (Bruce Wilford for filling in for me as my lovely wife's escort at my company picnic)
Though I haven't raced much this year, today, I think we raced the most cohesively I've seen all year (in a road race). Thanks to Rob for bringing radios. They most certainly helped as I was able to much more easily communicate to teammates.
Today Cal Giant clearly had the best team, in both strength and numbers. Other teams to watch were Metromint, BPG, Delta Velo, and Spine. Our plan was fairly simple: three to cover the early moves, and the rest of us covering the middle to end. Rob, James and Matt B. did a great job marking early moves. At the beginning of lap 2, a break of two scurried up the road. We weren't represented, but I wasn't too worried as we still had 90 or so miles to ride. However, by lap 3 the gap was over 3 minutes. Team Spine, led by Michael Hutchinson, drove a spirited chase which brought us to within one minute. The pack sat up. Then a flurry of attacks ensued, with multiple little grouplets rolling off the front. Our own Matt Morenzoni cleverly rolled off in pursuit, and eventually formed a front group of five that was quickly out sight.
However, by lap 6 or 7, Cal Giant got worried with only one guy in the front, who had been out in the wind all day. They proceeded to send some of their guys to the front including Steve Reaney (2nd last year), Max Jenkins (U23 Nat'l Champ), Keith Miller, and perennial hard-men - Patrick Briggs and John Hunt. Being saved were James Mattis and Jesse Moore along with everyone else in the pack, who were being towed along at a brisk pace.
Fast forward to lap 8, there were only two left up front, up-and-coming talent Jared (Metromint) and an EMC rider. The scary thing was that the gap wasn't really coming down despite Cal Giant's solid chase. I'll have to ask Jared what he had for breakfast as I evidently didn't have enough, and was making the rounds mooching food from teammates as it had been awhile since I'd done a 100 mile ride without either bakery or rest stops involved, and had underestimated my caloric needs(a scone or Little Debbie packs like 2-3x more calories than a Powerbar). Oops, back to racing...Poor Matt Morenzoni, who had been riding extremely well, succumbed to a mechanical and came out of the break. Who knows what would have happened if Matt didn't have the mechanical.
With a pack of about 25 - 30 still left, the gap only came down to 2 minutes. AV, having Greg and Dominic in addition to myself left, I made the decision to put them into the chase. Both did a good job contributing to Max Jenkins' superhuman efforts along with Patrick Briggs' "I'm not dead yet" chase backs directly to the head of affairs. Actually I would say every Cal Giant rider involved in the chase was impressive.
As Dominic took a pull into the tailwind section immediately preceding the feedzone on lap 10, I surged past him, initially to get him off the front. However, instinct took over when it 'seemed' to be a good place to apply some pressure to the pedals. Although the feedzone was now upon us, I didn't feel to bad for going hard because a) I did take a feed and b) we had gone through the darn thing 8 times already plus I've seen it done at Worlds on the last lap:)
As luck would have it, this worked perfectly because James Mattis with Andres Gil (Delta Velo) attached, bridged up and immediately started working creating a gap. As we entered, the tailwind stretch after the turnaround, Andres started struggling a bit so James and I did the bulk of the work before the long descent. Into the climb, we saw the break of two about 75 meters directly in front of us. We caught them in short order. Amazingly Jared was able to accelerate when we reached them. I was forced to step on it in order to shed him, and kept the pressure on over the top to ensure we had a decent gap to the resurgent Jared.
James and I worked well together, and didn't dare shirk any pulls as the Metromint rider lurking arrears wasn't allowing for any cat and mouse games. Coming into 1 km to go, I maneuvered James in front of me. We slowed to a crawl. Seeing Jared steaming up from behind, I attacked at 800 meters. Unfortunately this was into a block headwind slightly uphill and James was able to come back to me with about 300 to go. Now that he was in the favorable position, he jumped around me with about 100 long meters to go and was held me off to the line, taking a deserved victory. Hats off to Cal Giant for a great team effort, and to James who has been riding well all year,culminating with a 3rd at Elite Nats and winning his first District Jersey today.
Thank you to Maria for helping to feed, as well as all of the team who stuck around to either give time gaps (Rob) or to help feed.
Ted
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