After a very late start to the season, I’m finally feeling pretty good and was focusing my training so I could do well at the Idaho State Championship road race. The race started and finished on a backroad of Emmett. The course is similar to last year’s event, but with a bit more rollers. I train on most of these roads so I was familiar with the area.
Heather’s race was a few hours before mine, so I drove her partway to the race, and then she got out of the car and rode to the start. I doubled-back so I could hang out at home before I had to leave for my race. As I was driving back, I started calculating how long it would take her to get to the start. Then I realized that she may not make it! Well, I know Heather, she’ll probably realize this and just TT to the race and barely make her start. Well, she made it with a few minutes to spare and got a great warmup to boot!
After packing up the car I drove to the start/finish and registered. I still had plenty of time so I ended up hanging out for a while Heather was still finishing her race. Heather won her race and then quickly started helping me get ready. Heather would be going to the feed zone as we were doing 90 miles during the middle of a pretty hot day. I lined up and talked to a few people. Kelly was my only IMT/BOC teammate in this race but I knew he would be a good teammate to have. He’s now a tri-guy and mainly bike races for training. He’s got an obscenely high VO2Max.
The race starts and after the first right turn off of the start/finish road, a few people attack. I couldn’t quite see who they were, but I could see Jeff Morgan bridging up. Jeff is the young phenom from Pocatello who won the Garden Creek Gap road race. Since I knew it would be a long race, I decided not to react and just stay with the pack. As we started up the first real climb I learned that there were four people in the break, one of them was Cameron Hughes, who is a Pro. Even though he isn’t in contention for the “State” title, he could help his three breakaway companions get it. The other riders in the break were Jeff Morgan, Jason Dykstra and Jonathan Denison. Pretty good bunch of riders. Since my team only had two riders, I knew we should rely on the bigger teams not represented in the break, to chase.
We did a lap and came up El Paso for the first time. The pace was pretty hard for me, but I stayed in the top five as we crested it. I knew the selections would be made on this hill so I made it a point to stay up front on this climb. We dropped a few people, but then on the following flat stretch, a few rejoined. Vertical Earth was making a good attempt at driving the pack and that helped the break not get too far away. The next time we went up El Paso, they pushed the pace again and dropped some more riders. Again, I made it over in the front group, but I was pretty much at my limit. At some point, I think it was the second lap, we caught Jonathan. He seemed to be cooked, because we caught him, then quickly spit him out. So now there were only two real contestants for the state jersey up the road.
I kept having to self-talk myself into not doing something foolish. I really wanted to attack but I also knew that we still had a way to go. I did go to the front a few times to keep the tempo up, but at a pace much below my threshold.
Again, the third and last time up El Paso we dropped yet even more riders. We also subsequently caught Jason Dykstra and Jeff Morgan. Cameron must have been putting the hurt on everyone because when we caught Jason, he also couldn’t hang on. Jeff managed to stay with us though. So now we were down to only six riders in the lead (non-pro) group: Kelly and me, two from Title One, and two from ICE (Jeff Morgan’s team). At this point, I knew it would either be Kelly or me as we both didn’t do a lot of work and were feeling good.
Kelly would have better luck getting away, and I was pretty sure I could win it in a sprint. We basically rode easy until about 5K to go. That’s when the cat-and-mouse started (see picture). Whenever someone would attack, Kelly or I would cover. Kelly attacked once, but I was right on top of the Title One cover. This went on for a few Ks. It was looking like a showdown between Title One and IMT/BOC because the ICE riders were cooked at that point.
Kelly made another attack and this time they didn’t react. I could see Kelly go into time trial mode after he put a good gap on us. Now I got to just sit and wait for the sprint. They tried to chase but by the time they did there was no hope. Kelly can time trial at 30MPH for a long time… that makes him very hard to catch. As we approached the last corner, Kelly had it in the bag and we were sprinting for second. I set up perfectly and came through the last corner in front, then stood up and started sprinting. I got a gap and held it to the line for second. No easing up on this sprint! So Kelly won it and I got second. We won’t count Cameron (the Pro). 1st and 2nd isn’t a bad showing when you’re the only two members of your team at the race! We were both very pleased with the result.