Savannah Omnium

The first weekend of racing is always an interesting endeavor. As the saying goes, nothing gets your legs ready to race like racing. What that means is that you can do all sorts of training and intervals and the like but nothing ever quite simulates racing amongst a group of competitors. The Macon Tuesday Night Worlds rides can come close in experience (and even exceed racing in intensity) but those are still a month away.

For me, I usually go down to Albany for that first weekend of racing but with the elimination of the Albany Time Trial, I decided to head to Savannah for the first Georgia Cup Omnium of the year. I decided to race in the Masters 45+ category which didn't have an omnium classification for all three of the events which was a great decision.

Time Trial:

The first event on Saturday morning was the 13.62 mile TT near the Georgia Tech Savannah campus. We went off one at a time with a pretty strong tailwind and for the first four miles the wind pushed me to a great time and allowed me to settle into a good rhythm and heart rate. At four miles I reached the first turnaround and had to swing into a headwind and a slight climb for the next 6 miles. The key here was not to overcook the effort and blow up. While there was a bit of a rough patch in the middle of that section, I managed to keep everything together until the second turnaround which brought us back to the GT-Savannah campus and a strong finish. I managed to do the course in just under 30 minutes and took 2nd in my category and 7th overall which was an strong result.

Criterium:

This is the type of event that is my Achilles Heel. Being a good time trialist means that I'm not a very good sprinter and that's what this sort of event requires. We lined up as a combined field with the Masters 35+ riders which included a couple of former state champions. When the race started I had three goals: stay in the field, stay upright and get some of the surge type efforts required into my legs to begin to teach them to spin both fast and hard. For the first few laps, I struggled a bit to hone my cornering skills and leg speed but once I picked those up I found it fairly easy to stay in the front of the field. This allowed me to work on an advanced goal of attacking the field as a form of interval training and I did this three or four times with the hope of getting someone to go with me. Finally, with two laps to go and knowing that my chance of doing well in a sprint were basically nonexistent, I took a hard flyer as we crossed the start/finish line. I got a pretty big gap and decided to see if I could hold it for as long as possible. I managed to stay away until I was caught 150 meters from the finish. I didn't get much of a result but I raced hard and achieved all of my goals and then some.

Circuit Race:

On Sunday morning the event took us out to Hutchinson Island and the mini-Indy car course there for a 2 mile circuit to race on. This time I was just racing with the other 45 year olds (about 15-20 of us) for an hour and fifteen minutes. Due to the flat nature of the course, the group stayed together for most of the race with a few efforts popping off a few of the weaker riders. About 54 minutes into the race I had found what seemed like a good place to attack on a slight rise in the track while going through a 180 degree turn. I did a practice attack and found it fairly easy to get away from the group and so I allowed myself to be reabsorbed back into the pack to rest my legs a bit for a late race attack with the hope that I could get a couple of riders to go with me. The opportunity presented itself with a lap and a half to go and I went as hard as I could. I had one other rider jump with me and I decided to try and hold the gap. For a while it looked like we'd succeed and stay away but down the finishing straight, a strong rider from Jacksonville used the strength he'd built up over the last month of racing to pull a small group over the top of me with 100 m to go. I managed to hold onto sixth but it was another day of "almost."

In all, it was a great weekend of racing and while the results didn't show how hard I had raced and close I came to pulling off a win, I am really satisfied with my effort and the goals I achieved. As I told one person, "It is better to had raced and lost, than not to have raced at all."

Also, a shout outs to Trey Crisp who came down, raced hard and came away with a good result for the team in the Cat 4 race and Jeff "Stoney" Clayton who threw down in Greenville and walked up to the top step. Way to go fellas!

Next week is the last MIddle Georgia Time Trial series race and the weekend after that is Perry-Roubaix. Race season is fully underway and I'm in the thick of it.

Thanks for reading and keep the rubber side down.

Chad