William Frogge (Cat 1, 2, 3) TT – 3 place, Crit 2nd place.
Blake Robertson (Cat 4) Crit – 1st place.
Mark Yoshida (Cat 4) TT – 5th place, Crit – 2nd place.
Frogge, Mark Yoshida and I braved the swamps and dive bars of Monroe, LA to pin the first number of the season for the Twin City Cyclists 20K TT and Crit. Helluva of a long haul to get down there, but it will be much better when we get the team bus next year. Right DCJ?!
The TT started at 9am. Cold temps and a steadily growing head/cross wind made my run even that much more miserable. Not to mention that due to some confusion on posted start times, I missed my start by one minute. With that kind of deficit I decided to find a groove and save the legs for the afternoon crit. So I don’t have anything to make you proud regarding my TT other than I looked really swank in all of my aero gear. Nice course too!
Mark and I started our crit at 1:30 with a field of around 15 or so racers. They only had us going 25 minutes so I think everyone was convinced that it was going to be a hard charge from gun to bell. However, it was exactly the opposite. We started out a granny pace for the first few laps. I think everyone was waiting for the next guy to ramp it up. Well, someone eventually did and that was Mark. He went to the front and along with some of the other teams jacked the surges up to a tempo that started dropping the sucker fish. I was keeping prime position and keeping my nose out of the wind (talk about a sucker fish). There was a slight to brisk north wind blowing across the course. Good course. A few technical turns and a long, flat finish. Mark and friends eventually shredded the field down to a group of six or so guys. Each time we made the slight left onto the long finishing stretch the tempo would slow and usually change leads. I did not have the benefit of any information regarding time as my Polar is in the shop for repairs, but my guess it was about 18-20 minutes into the race I decided that if on the next lap, if they slow at that point again I was going to launch. They did and I did. I opened up a very fragile gap of 15 seconds give or take and Mark went to the front to break up the chase. I continued to hold the gap as Frogge called out the time splits each time I came around. After my second solo lap the officials flashed the 4 to go card. Man, so close yet so far! I was on the rivet. The gaskets were leaking, needle was buried and the pistons were about seize. I dove through every corner and dug on every stretch. With Mark’s help I was able to stay away the last four lonely laps for the win. The icing on the cake is that when Mark saw that I had enough distance on the last lap, he attacked the field and soloed away for a Memphis Velo 1, 2 finish!
Blake Robertson
