Leesville Road Race Report

The team was at all 3 local races this past weekend: Davis, Leesville, and Vacaville. Bo was doing final tune-up for Cascade Stage Race coming up next weekend and rode strong at Leesville. Thanks to some selfless teamwork from Rand, Bo ended up with a solid 7th place finish. Below is Bo's report.

Reports from the other races will be out soon.

Official Leesville Results

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Leesville RR
P1/2
60 mile loop
3000 ft. of climbing
50 riders
July 5th, 2008
Team: Bo Hebenstreit (7th), Rand, James, Jono, Rob

As hard as it is to believe the road conditions at Leesville were worse this year than in the 2007 edition of Leesville. I am not quite sure what happens on the 364 non-bike racing days that causes such destruction. The road is rapidly approaching "non road" status as larger and larger portions degrade to dirt and gravel. As would be expected the dirt and gravel sections were rough and the potholes felt more like craters. Every year, despite thinking I remember how
bad the road is from last year, I get that "you have GOT to be joking" thought running through my head as we hit the first rough patches.

The race started out as usual with attacks and short lived breaks. After a while it was apparent that no one was going to get away before the main climb.

When we arrived at the first section of broken chunks of asphalt (aka road) anyone who had not performed pre-race tightening down procedures was left to spectate/cheer on the other categories as they passed by. Also, at this time there was massive bottle ejection and propulsion. At least those stranded on the side of the road wouldn't be thirsty.

We stayed gruppo compacto (minus "injured bike" riders) until the climb where we became rapidly un-compacto. Within a few minutes the pack was completely blown apart. I felt good when we started climbing but unfortunately this only lasted for a very very brief period. As I was sucking every last bit of oxygen I could get into my lungs (and possibly drooling all over
my bars) I remembered that the team was hoping I would do well today. This seemed highly misguided at the time but as my brain wasn't functioning well enough to reason why they had made a mistake, I dug deep for the remainder of the climb.

When I went over the top, somewhere around 25th, I was in a group of six. Rand was a few minutes back.

Now I'd made it up the climb it was one more challenge to make it down the crater descent, which, to be honest, wasn't quite as sketchy as anticipated. At the bottom I was still in the group of six and we could see riders up the road. We traded pulls and in short order we had a group of eight.

After about 10 miles someone said "hey Rand is back". This was very confusing. You have eight guys doing a TDF style TT (maybe slight exaggeration but that is how it felt) and here comes
Rand from nowhere. Very impressive.

We arrived at the next climb, which is quite short, within a few miles or so of Rand catching back on. About halfway up the climb I could feel that my front tire was going flat.

I tell Rand and he promptly offers me his front wheel. I tell him to keep going but he refuses and insists that I take his wheel. We pull over and exchange wheels. I am able to get back to our chase group before the top of the climb! By the top of the climb we are again reduced to six and the moto tells us that we are two minutes behind another chase group, and there are six riders ahead of that group.

Now we have a carrot, the slim chance of a Velo Promo T-shirt, the group is highly motivated. Who doesn't want to be sportin' the latest look from Bob?

Fortunately, we caught the group with about three miles to go.

Now we were about 12 to 14 riders looking at one another going about 16mph.

At this point, I still had no idea if 2 or 20 people had already crossed the line.

I thought to myself, I wonder if I just roll off the front what would happen? The answer: not a lot. When I looked back at the 1K sign I had a good gap but they were starting to react and close the gap. I crossed the line with about 1 second to spare.

Other than being a little disappointed that I did in fact place just outside of t-shirt reach-7th place-I was pretty happy.

Thanks to Rand for giving up his wheel. In case you think that it is because he is a nice guy I must make it clear that he only did it so he didn't have to write this race report, just kidding.

Bo