Mt Hamilton Road Race

I came out to this race wanting to put in work that earned a good result, instead of watching the race unfold by sitting 10th wheel all the time. I figured if I can cut my teeth at the front and still get a good result I can prove to myself that I'm strong enough to hang. Anyway, that's the theory at least.

I rolled up to the school at 8:20 after some gasto, er, problems from some Mexican food the night before, so got my stuff on and rolled to the line in time for the start. The climb up Hamilton wasn't too bad, especially with Dave Rossow driving the pace in the drops for the first part! Farther up, I could hear the labored breath of the group so went to the front to drive the pace harder and whittle it down for the descent. At the top, I gunned it for the KOM, but didn't realize one guy had slipped away when I wasn't paying attention, so the chase was on. Oh yeah, that sprint for KOM made me feel godly, until I realized it was like 'winning' the charity ride.

Mark and Dave C. drilled the descent, really beyond my comfort zone after so many recent visits to the ER, but I held on. Grab a feed, then try to get organized. Unfortunately some of my group take the 'sit in and don't do any work' mantra too seriously and kept sitting up when they got to the front. One of 'em got a good result in the end, so I suppose it works, but it's still annoying. That's racing I suppose. After the junction, we see our guy off the front and absolutely drill it, with Mark and Zteam Robert and I pushing the pace harder than any climb before it to try to shed more of the pack and grab the man OTF. We caught the valiant breakaway, then started the long descent into the valley. Here, some of the paceline deadwood thankfully stayed out of the way and a real rotation started until we hit the bottom with about 1 km to go. A bit of cat and mouse, then it's on at 200m. I jump with the others, trying to unleash my little man fury, and get passed at the line for 3rd followed closely by Mark in 4th spot. I really like the hard races; starting to realize I don't like the 50 mile promenade followed by a huge sprint races and will try to stick to windy or hilly stuff. Without many summer road races, I'm going to reboot again and gun it for the cal cup while doing a few mtb races to keep it fun.

Hamilton was an awesome race. I keep an internal ranking, and it's definitely in the top 3. OK, so I've only done 6 USAC races, so it's not hard to get there now, but it seems like a great race and it's definitely echoed in the number of SB folks I saw out there that made the 5 hour trip..

5 points to go to Cat 3. Now that I've mastered grabbing water bottles in a feed without dropping 3 first, I can say I'm more than ready.