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Bear Lake Road Race & TTT |
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Team Bikeman -
Race Reports
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Written by Troy Nye
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Wednesday, 23 May 2007 |
Bear Lake Road Race & TTT
Garden City, UT
5/20/2006 to 5/21/2006
Too Many Races – Too Many Tough Decisions
 | | Well oiled machine |
It’s tough deciding between the Soldier Hollow ICUP mountain bike race, and the Bear Lake road race. Let’s break it down:
Option 1 – Wake up before dawn, drive 1.5 hours to Heber to suffer horribly on the hot, dusty, go-nowhere, Olympic XC ski course. Drive home in a dehydrated, dazed, beaten down stupor. Sleep for the next 35 hours straight and be generally ornery all weekend.
Option 2 – Take a nice, scenic, leisurely drive through beautiful Cache Valley to the even nicer, more beautiful Bear Lake Valley. Spend a fabulous evening with great friends and family at a gorgeous hillside cabin overlooking the lake. Wake up at a very civilized hour. Ride the bike directly to the start line (a perfect warm up distance, by the way). Spend the day riding and racing at a sometimes conversational (you won’t get that in a mountain bike race), sometimes anaerobic pace around the 51 mile circumference of one of the most strikingly beautiful lakes in the US. Rinse and repeat.
What would you do?
OK, maybe the decision’s not that tough after all.
Day One - Road Race
 | | Vinnie keeping the pace high in the closing miles |
Dave, Vince and I lined up for the CAT5 start around 9:30 AM. The race started off at a quick but comfortable pace, averaging around 26.5 mph for the first 16 miles, where a hard right, a nice little cross wind and a well timed attack would proceed to rip things apart nicely. The start group of around 45 was quickly trimmed to less than 30. All Bikeman riders would make the split. Halleluiah!
At around the halfway point, the course would turn back into the wind, but the pace would stay high for a while. As we climbed and descended several small rollers at a good hard race pace, I am happy to report that, while several others were shelled out the back, all three Bikeman.com boys were present and accounted for… and often seen at the front driving the group. Things would calm down for a bit, but with about 10 to go; big Vinnie (or the Big Diesel, as I like to call him) was getting a bit annoyed at the slow pace. For a good chunk of the last 10 miles Vince was determined to single handedly control the front of the race. The big diesel kept the pace way too high for any late attacks to occur, while Dave and I sat comfortably near the front of the field anticipating a good old fashioned bunch sprint. On a small incline with about 2 to go Dave found himself doing a bit too much of the work which consequently would prove to be his undoing as Dave is an excellent, albeit untested sprinter.
 | | Looking menacing in new duds |
A hard left at 1 km to go and it was ‘Race on’! Tactically, I nailed it. In about the 7th position, I found the strongest wheel and sat on it. This was clearly the strongest guy in the field and there I was, right on his wheel. I started feeling giddy. I was about to come around and win my first big road race. Had I gone 5 seconds sooner, I’d have done it too! Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to tell where the finish line was and I mistimed my attack badly. No banner, no nothing… just a painted line across the road. I was in the process of flying past my lead guy just as he was making his move on his newly found lead guy. We were three wide across the line, but I was the only one who’d gotten a free ride to the line. I would be 3rd, by less than half a wheel with a boat load of unspent energy in the tank. My best road racing finish yet, but I am still kicking myself.
Vince and Dave would both finish with the lead pack just a few seconds back. Well done!
Day 2 - TTT
 | | Yea! Prizes! Psst - Anybody wanna buy a watch? |
TT bikes, aero bars, and big funny sounding disc wheels are for sissies! At least that’s what we were boasting as we were milling around the start line for Sunday’s Team Time Trial. I think we were the only TTT team without so much as a clip-on aero bar amongst us. We didn’t care; we came to ride hard and spend some time working as a team and whaddaya know… turns out we make a pretty dang fast, well oiled team, regardless. El Go Go’s and goofy helmets next year? Who knows? But if not, I wanna go on record right now as saying “were sticking with the sissy comment”. When the dust settled, we managed to cover the same 51 miles in nearly the exact same time as the day before… with 42 less helpers. We ended up 3rd in the CAT4/5 TTT standings, just a few seconds out of 2nd. I couldn’t be prouder of the team. We flat laid it out and had a blast in the process.
Thanks!
Big thanks to Salsa Cycles for making such delicious race bikes; to Greyhound Juice for keeping our muscles warm, our backsides comfy and our (by which I mean my) legs silky; to Slick Willy for keeping our chains lubed and quiet; to Jagwire for keeping our gears shifting and our brakes stopping (but as seldom as possible on the latter); to the good folks at Bikeman.com for being just unbelievably good to us; and to all our other terrific sponsors, most of whom are most appropriately named after a mountain bike race because my road bike would look a trifle bit silly with a Rockshox fork on it, now wouldn’t it! And finally, a big, Big, BIG thanks to the Fojtek’s for their unbelievable generosity, hospitality and magical pasta salad that is so good you couldn’t possibly understand, so I won’t even attempt to describe.
Troy |
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; "Well oiled machine")
; "Vinnie keeping the pace high in the closing miles")
; "Looking menacing in new duds")
; "Yea! Prizes! Psst - Anybody wanna buy a watch?")
