Wards Ferry Road Race Report

Ted and Dominic ventured out to contest the Wards Ferry Road Race while some of the other guys were in Martinez. Below is Ted's report.

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Field: 15 - 20?

Laps: 5

Distance 60 miles

Placing: 3rd and 8th

Dominic emailed me the Thursday before Ward's Ferry, and since I hadn't seen him in awhile, wanted to do an out-of-town group ride with Christine racing in Redlands, decided to join Dominic for an early morning jaunt to Sonora.

As anticipated, we had a very small field. At least everyone came to race and the first lap was marked with multiple short-lived attacked, mostly animated by Andy-Jesse.

At the end of lap 2, Andy attacked again and an Above Category rider bridged across. As I scrambled for one of those questionable VP neutral feeds, Craig Upton (coach from Marin who raced on Navigators at one point and directed teh U.S. Women's Cycling Team in Australia a few weeks before) brdiged across to make the breakaway three riders.

For the next lap, our merry peloton rolled around with some tempo set by a red/blue team. I was thoroughly enjoying myself at the back, enjoying the pristine views and being amazed at how strenuous the course felt. Finally, Dominic couldn't stand it any more and started setting tempo. Since my legs hadn't yet woken up 40 or so miles into the race, and being a bit racing rusty, I told Dominic to get off the front and promptly surged on one particularly long roller, accidentally dropping Dominic in the process and disrupting the chase. Simply no excuse for this behavior, and I'm sure Dominic didn't appreciate "the thank you" for his efforts.

I sat up and we shortly regrouped after that. I should note that I was keeping tabs on both Chris Lieto and Dave Galvin (BMC) who were lurking in the back. Chris would occasionally take some graceful pulls at the front. Dominic proceeded to pull in-earnest, and rode his brains out for what seemed like a full lap. However, with a lap left, and the break nowhere to be seen, we heard the gap was at 2 minutes.

Yikes. that meant the race was more or less over, but I proceeded to try and get things going by starting be more active. I got Chris pulling as well. On the longer climb a few miles from the s/f, I rode hard and caused a split w/ Lieto, and Dave Galvin. Two others bridged up and we were off. One one of the other protracted rollers, Chris, myself ,and an EMC rider split off and achieved a gap on Dave the other rider. On the right hairpin, the BMC rider unfortunately went down leaving Chris and I by ourselves with 5 or so miles remaining.

Chris began taking shorter and less strong pulls, making me wonder if he was going to jump me. With three significant rollers left on the run-in to the finish, I noticed our slackening pace had caused the group behind to be close on our heels. I attacked Chris on the next roller and soloed in for 3rd.

Thanks to Dominic, we had a nice team effort, great conversations, on this beautiful Ward's Ferry ride.

At least that day I wasn't wondering "what the hell am I doing out here."

-Ted