Cherry Pie Road Race

Cherry Pie is always the race to kick off the Oregon road racing season. Well, I decide to join a couple teammates in the Masters 40+ Open field since Portland Velo was well represented in category 4 . I was quite nervous about this decision after looking at some of the names pre-registered in this group. Basically, many of these guys were Cat 1-2 racers in their younger years. My plan to was to "hang in" and learn from the experience.

Dave was my only teammate in the race and he is a well experienced racer from California. During the rollout, Dave says "follow any break with ZTeam and Hutchs" since they had the biggest team representation. I don't think either of us expected a 2 man break on mile 2 would hold. But the "big dog" Karsten from Z team and a Hutchs guy were there. Perfect tatics since the 2 big seems just hung out on that first lap.

I just "hung out" the first lap towards the back. I was impressed with the "steady wheels" in this group. I didn't notice any close calls and folks were friendly. I got to get the scoop on the season of Velo TV from Sal as we chatted in the back. I climbed the hill just fine on the 1st lap and was feeling very good after lap 1. I noted that Dave was racing very smart in the front - 6 to 10 wheels back and not doing too much work.

Lap 2 I decided to get up front and "hang out" with Dave. It was relatively easy to move around this pack with only ~30 folks. Towards the front, I got "caught up" in cat/mouse games at the front. What the hell, it was fun. Dave and I were jumping on attacks, closing gaps, and did a couple attacks ourselves. The Z Team and Hutchs boys were chasing down every attack - perfect "decoy" tatics. So, we tried to get some other teams in breaks, but it wasn't happening.

My key error during the race was chasing down a 3 man break on the last lap with about 5 miles to go. I caught them and then "paid the price" as I slipped off the back with 4-5 other guys as the pack surged. Nice timing, Paul!!!!

That's when the AZ training kicked in and I organized a 3 man rotating paceline to catch the pack. 30 seconds pulls for a 10 minutes of threshold intervals. We did it. That was the victory of the day. Of course, I had nothing left for the hill, but I didn't care. I was able to "hang with" the pack until the finish.

Now I remember why I spend time on the trainer at 5am - thanks Cherry Pie. :-)

The local Corvallis newspaper did a story.... Sweet Ride
OBRA results posted at OBRA (at least I wasn't DFL).