Perry-Roubaix

Last night Dad and I loaded up the car to head for Daufuskie, but decided to take a little detour over to Perry, Georgia to get in my first race of the year and my first ever road race. We arrived in Perry around 6am, plenty if time to check out the course and make all the needed preparations for a 10:22 start for my 50 mile cat 5 race.

When they sent us off it was all new to me and a lot different than I was accustomed to. In cyclocross and mountain bike races the hole-shot is an important part of the race, here it seemed like everybody wanted to treat the start like there warm up. That is with the exception of one guy who attacked right after the first turn and I quickly pulled him back in with the field on my wheel. The next time he went, about two miles in to the race, I decided to jump up to him withou the field and see what his strategy was. It came down to he basically didn't have one but wanted to be first in to the dirt section for fear of crashes. We quickly decided that while we had a gap we might as well just make a go of it and see if we could stay away. We really pushed ourselves on the first lap and the field was nowhere in sight by the end of it. A solo rider caught us on the second lap and the three of us then worked together. The extra man really helped in allowing one of us to take a break from pulling briefly if they needed it. I was really hurting by the time we hit the early climb on the final lap and could feel the twinges of cramps coming on but I dug through it and hung on. The guy that caught us on the second lap cramped on the final climb and dropped off the back. So the guy I started with 2 miles in and myself managed to stay away to the finish. I was sitting behind him and jumped around to sprint with just under 200 meters to go. I didn't get much response from him and rolled through with the win.

As I crossed the line every muscle in my legs was cramping but the win in my first ever road race felt great and overall I felt strong for the day. We beat the field pretty handily and averaged 23mph for the 50 mile race. The average speed of the winning rider last year on the same course was just under 19mph.

I also made some gear changes and put a new crankset on the bike, a DuraAce in a true double, 53-39. This was from my experience on the sprints in florida were I was topped out at just over 35 mph. I topped out at just over 39 in the sprint today and that made all the difference.

Now I'm just arriving on Daufuskie for a few days of training, golfing and relaxing with my Dad. We've also got some household projects that I'm sure my Mom would like us to do, but that's more just an excuse to be down here.
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