Vacaville GP Race Report

To cap off the 3-day holiday/race weekend, the Webcor/Alto Velo team headed up to Vacaville for the NCNCA district crit championships. The team rode well and our breakaway specialist, Rand Miller, almost scored a big result but ran into some bad luck in the end. That's bike racing. Still, he managed a very respectable 10th place. Read on to hear Rand's accounting of the events.

Official Results
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Vacaville Gran Prix--District Crit Championships
July 6, 2008
Weather: ~100 degrees, smoky, and windy
Teammates: Bo, Ryan, Rob, Jono, James, Bruce (on radio)
Place: 10th out of 100+

This is a great course for the NCNCA crit championships, with a tight, narrow, technical section that leads into an open ~40 foot climb and around some fast 90 degree corners. It demands power, endurance, and good bike handling...definitely one of the more entertaining NorCal crit courses.

This year, the race was a bit more difficult than usual as the heat was ridiculous and the smoky air made it that much more difficult to breathe. In addition, it came directly after the Davis crit and the Leesville RR, so you could tell there were a lot of tired legs.

I was very worried that my legs would be shot, since I had been way off the mark at Leesville the day before. However, as soon as we started the race, I discovered that the legs were good and I spent the first half of the race covering early moves.

About halfway through the race, I ended up in a move of about 14 guys that noodled off the front over the top of the climb. All the major teams were represented, and Jackson Stewart (BMC) and Jared Barrilleaux (Jittery Joes) were in there as well, so it looked promising.

The Alto Velo boys in the pack helped keep it in check, and pretty soon we were well clear of the "field"--roughly half the riders in the race had dropped out by this point.

Local NCNCA crazyman Jesse-Andy Mendonca (Lombardi) took a flyer with about 12 laps to go as we hit the hill...WAY too early, right? Wrong. That slippery guy got 35 seconds on our group in about 2 laps. I gotta stop second-guessing that guy...

With 5 laps to go, I attacked solo and made a (more-or-less feeble) attempt to bridge to Mendonca. I got a 10-15 second gap over the remaining chasers, and at best got to within about 20 seconds of the leader, but to my dismay I found that I had a slow leak in my rear tire starting at about 4 to go.

With my legs burning, my body completely overheating, and my rear wheel bottoming out on the rim around the corners, I barely held a 10 second gap going into the final lap. I really thought I might have a shot at 2nd place, but heading into the final hill Jared Barrilleaux bridged up to me, followed by the remnants of the break.

I tried as hard as I could to maintain position through the last two corners but when everyone stood up to sprint I had nothing left and ended up finishing 10th. Good enough for a sweet T-shirt!

Thanks to my boys in the group that helped keep the race in check...I couldn't quite pull off the result in the end, but we made the right moves all day. Also, thanks to the supporters on the radio who were calling out time-gaps and encouragement throughout the race. Congrats to Ryan for a good race, as this death-march was his first real P/1/2 race.

Rand