I am proud of you. Glad to see you are so passionate about cycling. Keep that burn in your belly and you will succeed at all you set out to do.

Dad

I just wanted clarify and to point out a few things regarding

the ToBR Race. I was in the Cat 5/Citizen Race, as a Citizen

racer.

There were actually 36 entries and starters on the line, if you

look in the confirmed rider list some guy was inadvertently

entered twice. Anyway, I was in the ‘third’ pack by lap 2. You

guys were at the front, then there were about 15 give or take a

few in the second pack and then my group which had 5 riders.

I can tell you that you or the second group never lapped us, we

were never headed after lap 1. In fact I passed two guys on lap

4 myself, one was in a orange champion system jersey and the

other was a real big guy all in grey shorts and shirt- who

bolted at the start, but I knew given his big size would crap

out- and he did!

Our small group was actually a bunch of real good bike

handlers- which is/was surprising for a Cat 5 race. I am sure

you lapped the fourth group- which there was because I finished

19th of 36. I basically trailed my group for the 5 laps and on

lap 3 was about 10 bike lengths behind. I easily closed it down

going into T-1 because I cornered flat out every lap.

On the last lap out of turn 5 I squared off the corner and

carried big speed up the left rise and shot passed the other 4

guys on their right- swung out wide again for 6 and kept

pedaling through towards the finish. On the straight away,

there was a rider in front of me and I said to myself- “gotta

get ‘em or die trying.” Right before the crest I passed him
and got 19th. So I wound up passing 7 guys within two laps.

My strategy of cornering fast and hard paid off because I

lacked the speed. Eight seasons of motorcycle roadracing has

its advantages! I’m 44, don’t race and really don’t train,

except for a few club rides here and there. In fact before the

race I only had 1,167 miles for the year.
So out of about 19 Citizens I finished 7th and out of the

entire field, 19th. Not bad for an old guy who doesn’t race.

I figured the ratio out by going to the USA Cycling site and

searching on all the entries. About 17 of you guys were cat 5.

In fact there were a couple of ‘bums’ who had raced cat 4 in

2009. I call them Cherry Pickers.

And by the way, the promoter/race organizer should break out

the results from cat 5 and Citizens category. There certainly

was enough in each category to do so. But…C’est la vie- eh?

I tried it and it did not work.

Any other suggestions? This blog is from almost a year ago, have anything new?

Melissa

Derek
http://www.derekveal.wordpress.com