Dean beat me to the blog it seems but I’m determined to break his streak of having NRR be his personal blog:-)
I get to ride in the “nearly ancient” 50-59 category this year. Not that it implies slowness given people like Mr. Zimbleman (26:33) but I’m obviously not him.
I can’t say I was really happy with my time (30:32) but then I’m also not sure what I was expecting to do. Fickle I guess.
Weather was far better that the picture the weather folks painted. Wind was a bit stiff on the return leg and I was totally redlined at the 3/4 point.
I got to the turnaround only to find a motorist with his SUV parked right where the cones were, blocking the lane. The official there didn’t seem too interested or even say anything to the driver. I easily lost 10 seconds there.
For a bit of REALLY ancient history, I looked at my times from my youth. Jack Frost used to be at Sauvies Island in the 70’s. My times on a conventional road bike (no TT bikes or aerobars then) were 33:03 (1976) and 32:57 (1977). I was barely high school age then so I’ve at least gotten faster.
Super Congrats to Colby with a 28:28. Absolutely amazing time for anyone and truly National class for a Junior. Keep it up!
Good job everyone who did the Race of Truth! NRR had 7 people there racing (unless I missed someone in the results). It looked to be a pretty nice day for a 28 to 30 minute, go until you get sick, kind of race. Kim and I showed up late and left early, so we missed the early races. I would have loved to see Joe K. and Allen thundering along on that tandem….. :) Here’s a link to how everyone did: http://app.obra.org/teams/84 and here’s a few pics I took while I was there.
The day didn’t start out too pretty, but it sure ended nice! Allen and I were driving through Woodburn around 7am and it was raining hard. We briefly discussed just grabbing some breakfast and telling everyone we flatted in our races, but not wanting to waste $20, we decided to continue on. It had stopped raining when we got there, but the wind was blowing pretty well and it was darn cold. By the time my race started at 10:10, it was starting to warm up a bit and the roads were mostly dry.
I raced in the 40+ 4/5’s. After a few miles, one of the Pacific Power guys started rolling off the front. I saw this happen last year and I wasn’t going to let it happen without me again. After he got a bit of a gap, I bridged and took a couple of guys with me. We worked pretty well together, but the head wind just sucked the life out of us and we were reeled back in. After that, I decided to hide out of the wind and I watched several fliers take off and come back. The second half of the race was with a tailwind and the overall speed really ramped up. I got off on another break with a couple of guys, but the lead car stopped at an intersection and we basically had to come to a stop. I looked back and our gap had pretty much disappeared, so we sat up. We rode for a while in a nice double paceline and I was sitting in the third row. I kept waiting for someone to break and around the 5k mark, the guy next to me shot off. I jumped behind him and several guys went with us. I heard after the race that there was an accident behind me and that probably helped us get away. I was getting pretty cooked and when we hit the first hill before the right hander to the finish hill, I popped. I was struggling up that hill waiting for 30 guys to come streaming by, but when I looked back, they were a ways back. I managed to stay ahead of them and passed a couple other guys before the finish. I finished 7th, but one of the guys ahead of me was in the 60+ race, so officially I took 6th. I had a great time!
I rode back to the start and watched Allen and Steve roll off, then threw my lawn chair over my shoulder and rode back to the finish to cheer them on. Allen ended up spending too much time driving the pace and blew up around mile 40 when no one else wanted to help chase the break. He finished as Lantern Rouge with style and panache though. Our other NRR folks at the race had great finishes too! Steve was 6th in the 50+, Georgann took 1st in the women’s 40+, and Colby was 1st in the Juniour 13-15.
Way to go NRR!!!
Gary was there watching his son race and he took some pictures. I’ll post some up once I get them from him.
It was cold
Gasping for breath
Dean
