State Road Race

The race. A bunch of laps, 100 miles total, a distance worthy of a state championship road race. Mick Walsh attacked early and everyone let him roll off. Not long after our very own Dan bridged up with Phil Elasser from team Fanatik. The three of them must have been cruising because they got as much as a 4:20 gap at points and had no representation from Haggens, Lenovo, HSP, or really anyone but us and Fanatik. Gin mostly sat in and covered a few bridge attempts, but it was overall fairly passive racing for the first half.

Halfway through the race Ian decided that his bladder was about to rupture and he just could not get himself to pee on the bike (Ronnie hadn’t told him about long division yet). So he pulls off for a 2 minute Austin Powers style urination then proceeds to chase back on for the next twenty minutes. Amusingly enough JOD came to the same conclusion a mile later and they were both peeing and chasing back on independently. Maybe some of that team money we get from the race can go towards buying some team radios. Communication is good and all.

Unfortunately for Mr. Mensher and JOD right around when they were peeing is right around when it started getting an organized chase. They both managed to get back on though. Ronnie flatted out sometime mid race and Dux was done with one or two to go. After 80 miles of racing the early break of 3 finally was reeled back in. I gave Dan a “nice work Dan” but I’m pretty sure he was comatose at that point. Impressive that Dan can still ride a bike while fully unconscious though. Shortly thereafter I attacked up the right side nearly taking myself out in the process thanks to a nice slick layer of mud on the shoulder. I pretty quickly got a 20 or 30 second gap. Just before the final turn I caught the Lead women’s group and passed them. When I got to the 1k to go sign the lead car neutralized me so that the women’s field could repass me and sprint. This mucked up the womens finish pretty good and had me very frustrated. They restarted me with a 20 second gap but I’m convinced that I had closer to 40 seconds or a minute by the time they stopped me. It sucked, but whatever. I started rolling again and put another 10 seconds into the field right away. The gap floated from 20-35 seconds for the remainder of the lap. I knew that this was the card I had played and that I had Ian sitting in for the sprint, so I put everything into it. Back in the pack I hear that Hone, Stanko, and Clayville were all chasing, but I managed to stick it. Finally after 20 miles of racing I hit the final 200 meters and was undoubtedly THE SLOWEST person to climb that hill that day. At least that is what it felt like. I finished it off and was able to post up and celebrate my victory, but less than 10 seconds (maybe more like 5) after crossing the line the field crossed behind me. I heard Ian screaming in triumph as he handily took the field sprint from the best sprinters in the NW. Awesome.