Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Cherry Pie 2011 - Dr. Tom

Well, loaded up with some new willow glen bicycles bottles and socks, i headed up for the cherry pie crit.  weather was awesome but super windy.  basically a headwind down the hill and around the big D section of the course.  About 60 guys registered with a large contingent from specialized, safeway, lombardy, and morgan stanely.  a few other teams, red peloton and some others i didn't pay attention to.  

Of course I started in the back but moved up to about mid field before the end of the lap, we weren't really going all that fast the first couple of laps.  A few attacks that quickly came back, until a break of safeway, specialized, and lombardy, plus one other got away.  The extra guy quickly got dropped and the other three seemed to be working well together.  They weren't all that far ahead of the field but there teammates pretty much junked up the front.  After a bit another safeway and specialized guy got away and bridged up to the lead trio.  They still weren't really gaining a lot of time.  

In the field it was pretty goofy.  Guys were getting dropped at the hairpin at the top of the hill, going down the hill, and in the turns.  I guess despite the extended lack of rain there isn't a lot of fitness around right now.  I kept moving around those jokers and at one time I think there were only about 20 of us left but then later the other guys caught back on.  At one point I pulled back a safeway guy through the windy section just for kicks.  

Around halfway, Sayers started getting annoyed and started drilling it for awhile.  We would be single file for most of the lap for a few laps but no one else was helping so the field wasn't making much progress.  Eventually, he got a little group away of 6 guys and then the field really sat up.  Finally, with coming up to three to go, I figured I should give it a go and see what happens.  I accelerated up the hill while billy innes did the same on the other side of the road, dragging the field with him, through the hairpin I was about 5th.  Once out of the hairpin, he sat up as did the other guys, so I rode away on the downhill, got a gap and then stuck with it.  

Not sure how far up on the field I got, but they didn't really seem to be catching me.  I was making slow progress on the two groups in front and ended up catching one guy that had gotten dropped. I stayed away and held the field off for a tenth place finish.   Pretty boring race, I guess there was one crash but it had happened behind me and I really didn't realize it until the next lap when a couple of guys were picking their bikes off the ground.

tom

Pick the Canadian