2012 Oklahoma State Championship Road Race.

I guess the race couldn't have gone much better. I ended up making it into the winning break, and won the 3 man field sprint at the end. Right before we started the race, I figured our chances of doing well were going to be tough. There were a few more guys that didn't preregister that showed up. I would guess there were probably around 30 cat 1's and 2's altogether. Most of the in state heavy hitter cat 1's didn't show, but it was a pretty good quality field overall. DNA and the Bicycles of Tulsa team each had quite a few riders. Still, we were going to need a perfect storm scenario for things to go well.

The weather was pretty much perfect, and as we rolled out it took about 10 seconds for the race to get animated. Lots of attacks and counter attacks on the first lap, but nothing going anywhere. The wind wasn't blowing much and there wasn't anything like a big hill to cause any kind of separation. I kind of figured the race was going to end up in a field sprint. I was basically just trying to conserve and sit in, but keep an eye on what was going on. We were doing 5 laps around Draper lake. Around about the time we were hitting the marina area where we started for the second time, I noticed a dangerous combination of 3 riders had managed to slip away.

The 3 riders were Chad Hodges (DNA), Chris Zenthoefer (Tulsa Tough), and Ben Silk (Bicycles of Tulsa). All 3 guys were cat 2's and were on the 3 biggest teams represented. I had to make a split second decision and saw an opportunity as we were catching the cat 4 women group with their lead and follow cars. There was a very narrow alley to jump from the field, through all that, and up to the break. I figured maybe a couple of guys could possibly manage to get through, but not everybody. I jumped as hard as I could, and as luck would have it, nobody came with me. I was in do or die mode because with that combination, I knew it had an excellent chance to be the winning break. Even though the cat 1's and 2's were racing together, there would be a state champion in each category this year.

I managed to catch on, but I was pretty winded. I tried to sneak up on them as quietly as possible and even managed to sit on for a couple of rotations and recover before they knew I was there. It was still pretty early in the race as we still had 40ish miles to go, but even though it was hard, I think it's still easier than the hard surging that would be going on behind us, not to mention a lot less frustrating. There's not much racing that's worse than being in a race where you miss a break with lots of the escaped riders team mates left in the field. You're basically just rolling around and racing for 5th or 8th or whatever.

Anyway, it didn't take us too long for us to get a pretty good gap. The first time we hit the dam, it looked like we had a minute or so. Nobody really gave us any time gaps, so we never really knew. The second time we hit the dam, I estimated we had at least 3 minutes on the field because as we were at the end of the dam, I couldn't see anything as far back as I could see. Everybody worked really well in the break. Nice and smooth for the most part.  A little before we started our last lap, I was starting to run low on fuel. I still had plenty of water, a little cytomax, and a Gu packet. I took the gu and chugged my cytomax, and just as we were hitting the hilly section on the north end of the course, I started feeling better.On our last lap, I pretty much knew we were not going to get caught. I started to go into serious conservation mode and save as much energy as possible for when things would get hard again.

Chad, Ben and myself are more the small sprinter type guys, whereas Chris is a bigger powerhouse breakaway type guy. I knew it would be in his best interest to not sprint with us up the finishing hill, so sure enough with about 6 miles to go he started attacking the break. On his third attack we dropped Ben, so now it was down to 3. There was probably a mile and a half to go when we hit the hilly section the last time. Chris attacked again and I started chasing first with Chad behind me. I really wanted to try to be in the back at the 1 kilometer to go point, but as luck would have it, I was first.

Really, the last mile we overall rolled pretty slow. I kept one eye on Chris and Chad and the other on if we might be getting caught looking behind us. Chris attacked 1 last time at the 500 meter point. I hesitated so Chad would be forced to start first, and he did. This was right where I wanted to be, and at 200 meters I wanted to jump, but that's a long way to go when you're climbing. I guess somewhere around the 150-120 meter point I jumped and went to the right of Chad, and I saw Chad go left of Chris. I could see Chad out of the corner of my eye at first, but I just locked onto the finish line and went as hard as I could. I was pretty worried I would cramp when we started to sprint because every time we would react to Chris's attacks, I could feel it creeping on. I guess the other guys were hurting pretty good also, so it all worked out well. That was by far probably the most painful sprint I've done in a long long time, but it was worth it!

Super Sweet Photo by Biff Stephens

Chris, myself and Chad

Not a bad weekend for the 2 man wrecking crew of Brian Parks and myself!  The last road race of the year is in 2 weeks, then we jump right into some action packed cyclocross racing!