NWA Spring Classic 2011

It was another early morning road trip for our small group to Prairie Grove Arkansas for the 2011 NWA Road Race. Rob, Judson. Tony, Alex, and myself met up at our normal meeting spot and sponsor Schlegel Bicycles, and were on the road shortly after 5:00 AM Sunday morning. We took a little different route than the normal one. I-40 to Salisaw, then north all the way to HWY 62 all the way to the race . Pretty scenic curvy, hilly roads. Shawn drove up the day before and would be racing in the 1/2's with Rob and I.

I realized my first major error of the day when we first stepped out of the car. It was cold. Really COLD. I had plenty of clothing, but being as warm as it was last weekend, I decided to shave my beard off and buzz my hair. Looks like I cut it about a week and a half too early. Anyway, this was maybe the coldest weather I've ever raced in. I've definitely ridden in much colder weather, but racing in it is a different story. Normally, you want to dress lighter than normal if you're racing cause you're going so hard and it typically warms up as you go along as well. My legs, feet, and head were all good, but my hands and upper core never really got warm all day. I think the temperature may have actually gotten colder throughout the day. Upper 30's I think.
The weather didn't really affect my race performance, it just made things really uncomfortable.

Our race was 72 miles. The course was a 24 mile loop that we would be doing 3 laps on. I really like this course. I guess it's the 4th time I've done this race. Kind of a big rectangular shape with some nice rolling hills, some long straight open country road type sections where the wind can be a factor, some winding roads through big trees, and a good climb about 5-6 miles from the finish. The wind was not too bad, so the gutter racing was there, but not enough to cause any serious damage. There were 33 guys in our race. A lot of individual riders, we had 3, Soundpony had 4, Tulsa tough had 4, BOT had 4 riders I think, and Mercy had 8.

The first lap, I thought we rode pretty smart for the most part. There was usually 1 or 2 of us near the front keeping a good eye on things. I got into a couple of early moves with Jacob Lasley from Soundpony. Around 12 miles in he started attacking like crazy. I went with him the first 3 times I think. There was one point where 5 of us broke off, and I thought it was going to stick, but no go. He took off again, and I was there but I let it go. Maybe a bad move not going with him? Maybe not, but it took a while for the field to bring him back this time. Everything was back together. I could see the big hill up ahead, when some guys wanted to take a pee break. Everyone slowed down, and some guys were already stopped.

It was kind of like in a Nascar race where everyone is coming in for a pit stop, but at the last second, one guy fakes everybody out and goes back onto the track to get position on everyone. That's pretty much what happened as Jacob kept rolling. He didn't attack, but he didn't slow down like everyone else did, so he established a nice little gap going into the hill for the first time. When we got over the hill, I found myself towards the back of a hard chasing field. I think at that point Rob and Shawn were towards the back as well. I remember thinking I had burned quite a few matches already, and that I should just sit on and recover for a bit. Looking back, that kind of thinking can cost you a good result, and in the end it did.

I could see that the field was slowly pulling Jacob back. The next thing I know, I see a couple of guys trying to bridge. That's the problem with not having anyone where the action is. If you're not there, you can't react. The 2 riders were Evan Bybee riding solo for DNA and Jay Blankenship for Tulsa Tough. They bridged up and took off from there. Early on I wasn't too concerned. They were kind of dangling 20 seconds up the road for a long time, plus I figured the Mercy guys would start working, or at least working harder than they were. By the time we were a lap and a half in, the gap had gone up to a minute. Rob asked if we should start working. I figured it was still no big deal and if it got over 1:30 or so, we would start.

I went up to the front to see what the situation was, and it was not good. Jason Waddell was in total control of the race tempo, and the Mercy guys had pretty much given up. I rolled through a few times to try to encourage the group to keep on it, but it didn't help much. Somewhere around this point, I heard the time gap was up to 2 minutes. I found Rob and we decided it was time to start working. This was just before we hit the big hill the second time. As was the case last time up, I got shuffled to the back. For the remainder of the second lap, Rob stayed on the front and just drilled it. He single handedly shrunk the gap from 2:00 to 1:15, but, it quickly became apparent that Rob would not be getting any help. If anything, all the guys who had a rider up the road and were blocking-sitting on, were sitting pretty out of the wind, and all the potential allies were struggling in the gutter.

I weaseled my way up to the front and told Rob to shut it down. I figured at that point we could either race for 4th or give it to someone else. Going into the last lap, the field had gotten smaller. Maybe 20 guys left. There were a few moves that we tried to get into, but nothing was sticking. I'm not exactly sure how Rob was feeling, but another possible bad move on my part was asking Rob to hang back on the big hill to help me stay connected to the group. I knew the race would be from the top of the climb to the finish line, and sure enough, the fresh guys killed it. I think if Rob went up the hill at his own pace, he may have been more in the mix.

Anyway, there's a ton of woulda, coulda, shoulda type things that happened in this race. The field split up into 4 groups or so in the end, and Rob and I spent the remainder of the race bridging from one group to the next. In the end I got 15th, Rob got 19th, and Shawn got 30th. Not quite what we were looking for, but we did get a lot of work in and learned some new lessons in the process. I'm looking forward to some of the upcoming events were we'll get a chance to ride with some of the newer guys on the team, as there are tons of things coming up. Sorry no pictures this time. My teamate and buddy Tony has our race finish as well as the cat 3 finish on his blog http://joetoprocycling.com/video-clips-from-the-finish-line-nwa-spring-classic-2011/