Nocatee Stage Race 8/22-8/23/09

This was my first race as a category 3. I was a bit nervous about the race and didn't sleep all that well on Friday night. It was a fairly early departure from Gainesville to make it over to Ponte Vedra for our race at 9:35. It was still overcast which was nice as it kept the temperature down for the race.

My teammate Eric and I talked about attempting to break away part way through the race and hopefully put some time on Ken Vida who is an excellent time trialer. We tried a couple of times but were chased down by the peleton quickly. Eric is a marked man with his long list of podium finishes this year. With two laps to go Eric closed down the gap to a small break away and attacked. Vida followed but did not pull through to continue the attack. I was moving up to hopefully break up any attempt to chase them down if the did get away and when Vida sat up I blew past them and quickly put a descent gap on the field. I was mostly expecting this to turn out to be a spring board for Eric to counter attack when the peleton caught me. There was still 12 or 13 miles left in the race and I did not expect to stay away to the finish. As I came through the finish area for the bell lap and still had a good gap I started to think I could do it. I just kept my head down and put everything I had left into the effort. When I turned off the highway onto the road with a nice tailwind I knew I had it. I had about 30 seconds on the field which gave me time to enjoy the finish. I could hardly believe I won my first cat 3 road race. A huge thank to Eric for his efforts breaking up the chase. I could not have done it without him. He also managed to take second place in the field sprint for a 3rd place finish.

The time trial was scheduled to start at 5PM so I settled in and watched the racing for the afternoon. The clouds started to build and by 2:30 we could see the thunderstorm headed our way. It hit with lightning and heavy rain just before the start of the cat 4 race. They postponed this race which my teammate David was racing in until the storm passed which was almost 4:00. It was still raining, but the lightning was over. At about 4:30 they decided to postpone the time trial to the next morning starting at 7:30. I headed back to Gainesville knowing it was going to be a really early wake up call the next morning.

Up by 4:30 and on the road by 5:30 it was back to Ponte Vedra for the time trial and criterium. My start time was 8:32, but I car pooled with my friend Ryan who had an earlier start time. My legs were feeling a bit tired after the effort the day before, but I posted a descent time of 11:20 for the 6 mile course. I did loose almost a minute to Ken Vida finishing in 7th place. Eric finished 20 seconds down on Vida in 2nd place. We had our work cut out for us if we were going to beat him in the overall.

Our crit started at 2:05 in the afternoon. After the clouds burned off it was hot. The course was fairly technical with 8 corners. It was dead flat, but all the corners made a breakaway a likely scenario. We didn't think Vida would let us get away in a break without him, so our plan was to lure him into a break with both of us and then take turns attacking him in the last 4 or 5 laps of the race. This did not work for us. He attacked from the gun and quickly put 20 seconds on the field. There were a lot of people chasing, so the pace was really high for the first 15 minutes. Eric was surfing the front 5 places, but I was hurting and could not find the groove for the first little bit. I got my legs under me and started to move up. I got to the front and took a hard pull to bring down the gap to Vida. There were a couple other teams working hard to do the same, but we only got it down to around 15 seconds. Eric made the effort and bridged up to Vida solo. Shortly after a couple other small group went across the gap and the breakaway swelled to 6 or 7. It stayed away and Vida won with Eric taking 2nd right on his wheel. Unfortunately due to this break I lost my podium place in the overall finishing the weekend in 5th.

Other team results from the weekend:

Amy took 4th in the Cat 4 women's road race, 2nd in the time trial and 2nd in the criterium. This put her in 1st place for the overall Cat 4 women. David had consistent finishes in all 3 races even braving the rain and lightning for the Cat 4 road race. Marco came over for the Cat 5 crit on Sunday and took home 7th place. Ryan who I rode with on Sunday, but is not on our team, took 1st in the Masters 35+ time trial winning by less than a 1/4 of a second.

One of the other Gainesville racers got my win on video. I will post it as soon as I get a copy from him.