Cherry Pie--I got beat by a 'cross bike?

First of all, let me just say that road sucks (or at least that is my feeling at this point). I enjoy the 45 minutes of redlining in cyclocross races where everyone simply goes as hard as they can and the person that can last the longest/screw up the least wins. That's not the case with road racing.

So today was my first real road race. The weather wasn't bad, especially considering it's Oregon in the spring time.



Here's my summary of how the pack behaved:
"ok, I'm feeling good, let's pick up the pace for a while"
(2 minutes later): "crap, my legs are tired, let's all slow down and take a break"
(5 minutes later): "ok, I'm feeling good, let's pick up the pace for a while"
on and on and on for ~24 miles.
Approximately two miles from the finish: "uh oh, we're getting close, we should probably pick up the pace so it looks like we were actually trying." Seriously, that's how the peleton (I hate calling Cat 5 racers that) behaved.

Anyway, I learned a lot about position and where you need to be at certain times. I also learned that road riders are a bunch of pansies. Granted, I think I'm in pretty good shape but out of the one-hour and ten-minute ride today I spent 90% of it way under my lactate threshold with a measly 4 minutes exceeding it.

There's not a whole lot to talk about. We rode bikes, no one fell/crashed in out category and I felt like I spent just as much time on the brakes as I did pedaling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the finish. The racers were told it was on a 5% grade. The race promoter lied. Ok, well they may not have lied but they failed to mention the 10% grade immediately before the 5% finish.


Heading into the last corner I was about 30 people back trapped on the inside, about the worst spot possible. As the pack (I refuse to call them a peleton) flew around the last corner I thought the course went straight so had to slam the bike over to make the corner. When I did this a funny thing happened, everyone was so concerned with taking the corner tight they left me the entire left side. Shooting up the centerline I was able to make contact with the leaders just as they started to go. Finding the leader's wheel I sat there and hung on. We both made it up the first riser just fine but both of us looked up at the same time and realized we kicked it in too early, thinking this riser was the finish. Stealing a quick look back I saw the next group about 30 yards behind us. Knowing the other group wouldn't catch us but also realizing that we were both spent we fought the last rise and into the finish. I remember us being a lot closer together crossing the line (about a bike length or so) but looking at the pictures I realized it was almost 10 yards. Oh well, I got second in my first road race. While I wanted to win it I'll settle with second... for this week.

Next week, Sublime Sublimity Circuit Race: tons of climbing and a combined Cat 4/5 field. Should be interesting.