Home  Team BIKEMAN Sweet Taste of Victory!!
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Sweet Taste of Victory!! |
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Written by Andrew Freye
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Tuesday, 29 April 2008 |
 Sweet Taste of Victory!!
Finally after a few bad races I was able to pull everything together and got a very sweet taste of victory! A lot of people don’t have anything nice to say about the race course at Winding Trails. I however, have a soft spot in my heart for this race.
One of my high school coaches (Jon Kindig) took me to this race in the spring of my freshmen year in 2000. Eight years later I have been able to hit up Winding Trails every spring, making this my 9th consecutive year racing the Fat Tire Classic!
The course is a relatively flat, wide open, and fast! Winding trails is primarily a Nordic XC Ski center and the majority of the race course is on the ski trails, so you can picture wide open trails. This course really suits the rider with the biggest engine and the strongest legs. Over the years the promoters have done a good job adding small sections of single track off the ski trails to mix things up.
The weather forecast was predicting rain over night and into the am. On my drive down to York ME to meet up with Bikeman.com teammate Mike Joos I saw a little bit of rain on the windshield of the Saturn. I thought the course would be a little muddy, but nothing too bad since its been so dry in CT the past couple of weeks. It appeared that the weather forecast was once again wrong as it hadn’t even rained a drop in Farmington, CT. In fact the sun was even breaking through the clouds.
As far as the race went, it wasn’t too exciting. John Foley and brand new U-23 Devo rider Greg Carpenter were gunning it from the start. I mean really gunning it like it was a national race! I was sitting in third, about 10-15 seconds back from them. The lead duo’s legs must have been toast once they hit the first short climb because their pace slowed down enough for me to catch up to them and blow right by them. Carpenter said something along the lines of “Where did you come from?” as he was in complete shock. Well as soon as I crested the top of the climb a guy from Bike Barn (John Peterson) passed me. Peterson was attacking it pretty hard. Since I hadn’t had the opportunity to get in a full lap before the race I decided I should play it semi safe for the first lap. Up until half way through the 2nd lap I was stuck in no mans land, up to 20 seconds off the leader, and anywhere from 10-20 seconds ahead of a group of 3 riders. I could tell that the chase group was trying to work together to pull me in. Should I sit up and hopefully work with the chase group to catch up to the leader, or should I lay down an attack and only worry about the race leader? Answer was simple, open a can of whoop ass!
I caught up to Peterson and pretty much stayed in second place for the rest of the race. Peterson was blowing through the feed zone. I didn’t see him take any bottles or to sit up and take in a gel. He was riding pretty inconsistent, attacking and fading etc… I tried to figure out his strengths and weakness since I am not familiar with his racing. On our last lap about half way through I noticed he slowed down considerably. Did Peterson want me to lead so he could sit on my wheel just before the finish? Or was Peterson starting to blow up? I didn’t have much choice, slowing was only going to allow other riders to catch up, so I opened up another can of whoop ass! I threw down the attack for 20 seconds or so, looked back and then kept on going for another minute. Turns out Peterson wasn’t able to respond to my first attack. After that it was just a matter of holding a reasonable pace and throwing my hands up for victory as I crossed the finish line!
I said before that the race was going to be won by the rider who had the best legs and the biggest engine, but I think I had a slightly unfair advantage over the other riders. The Salsa Mamasita was perfect for today! The big wheels kept me going super fast on the open straights, and like always the bike was flying through the single track! I’ve been using the new Lake MX330 and they are awesome! The Boa system gives me a nice snug fit that allows me to transfer more power directly to my pedal stroke then conventional 3 strap shoes.
A
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