Chad Brown and I lined up for the B Group race for the first Training Race at Camp Sumatanga along with about 40-50 other adventurous souls willing to fight the wind and brave the cold.  We started off pretty tame and rolled at or about 20 mph for the first 5 miles of the first loop (we did 4 loops of a 10 mile course).  Eventually a solo rider simply rolled off the front about 7 miles in never to be seen again.  A Bicycle Works rider bridged up with the gap was ~ 15 seconds and they eventually extended their lead to around 50 seconds and held it. 

Back in the field, several of the BHM area teams seemed destined to work against one another with Bob’s Bikes and Bike Link organizing a chase for 10 minutes then falling away from the front.  I’m not sure if the unidentified solo rider was on one of these teams or not.  There were several attempts by groups of various sizes to bridge to the 2 man break, and for the most part I believe either Chad or I went with every strong looking attempt, but for some reason the pack wouldn’t have any of the bridge attempts and it always came back together.  After 40 miles of start-and-stop riding where we’d go from 19 MPH to 30 MPH, things finally got a little sketchy when an ICS rider and a MedPlan rider got together and crashed (though it looked like the mess started well in front of them and they really had nowhere to go).  I’ve heard both were OK, just sore, but I’m not sure. 

As usual, the pace picked up for the final 2 miles or so, especially after right hand turn from Gallant Rd. onto Camp Sumatanga Rd.  There was a pretty bad glare from the sun at this point in the race as we were headed dead West it appeared.  Someone got into Chad’s wheels and they just about crashed about 1k to go as evidenced by that ever so scary sound of carbon rims screeching to a halt.  At that point, I was sitting 15th wheel or so (I’d guess) I decided that sprinting for glory in a Training Race wasn’t smart, so I coasted in at the back of the pack, likely around 20th place.

It was a good first RR of the year.  At times it was hard, I set a new 5 second power best at 1185 watts during one of the bridge attempts, but there was always time to catch your breath if you needed it.  Looking forward to next week’s race.  The long range forecast looks much warmer!