Our whole team showed up for the Ohio State Road Race in Waynesville, Ohio on a tougher than it looked, fun and exciting 10.4mile course. The cat1,2 men did 83 miles, the cat. 3 men did 62 and the women did 52.
In the men’s cat1,2 event all of our riders showed in early breaks with lots of aggressive riding. Tris ignited the first real move with Brian and Dan making it up with Texas Roadhouse and others. Later successive attacks by Brian opened the door for Ray to head out for 20 miles solo building a 2 minute lead and being bridged to on the 5th lap by Dan and Matt and 4 very strong riders from different teams.
This move made it to the end. Ray got dropped on the 7th time up the climb due to severe leg cramps, but stayed away only being passed by Brian and Jeff from Inferno about 3 miles from the end. Brian and Jeff escaped the ever shrinking field in the late going. Many stated this was the hardest race of the year. Ray saw a 17 second lead with 1.5 miles to go evaporate and just had enough in the tank to come in seconds before the decimated field that still contained Shawn and Tris racing for the last 6 money spots. Brian finished ahead of Jeff and Dan and Matt who rode strong in the break sprinted it out with Kirk up the road by a few seconds.
Although we did not take a podium spot, we rode very strong and took 4 of the top 10 spots (4,5,7,9). Congrats to the podium of Kirk Albers, Josh Halvex and John Gatch.
Sam raced in the Women’s cat1,2,3,4 field and rode a strong last lap, gapping the field up the climb and came home sprinting, but lack of road closure as promised meant a compromised sprint and took a very close 2nd to State Champ Jane Evely. Way to go Sam.
Hopefully someone caught our suffering on video or film as Sunday was a brutal day of bike racing and appropriate for a State Championship.
