The 16th Annual Sterling Road race

This is the second chase group being led by Team Embrocation at the 2010 Sterling Road Race that my bike club, The Minuteman Road Club puts on each year.

For more photos, visit: My Picasa Album

Here's my race report, for posterity:

Racing today reminded me of skiing as a kid in the Cascade mountains: It was wet, very cold considering how warm it was, and the visibility descending was minimal.

The Cat 5 35+ race was pretty uneventful. Everyone rode fairly safe considering conditions. I saw a couple guys almost go down as their bike wobbled back and forth, but somehow they managed to keep it upright. There was also your typical singleton shifting lines without looking almost taking out everyone, but I learned to keep away or in front of him. You wanna know what?s nerve racking? Descending that twisty hill (my GPS unit says we hit 37 MPH) tightly formed without much visibility. I did the whole, one eye-closed, open the other eye, squint, reverse, close the other eye thing as a firehose of water and road grit was shot into my face like some James Cameron special effect.

Anyway onto the racing action. We road around the course three times, I kept waiting to get dropped on the hill. But it never happened. I stayed in a good safe position and never really had to work very hard. The second to last time up the hill I just sat in about 6th place and rode up Meeting House seated and feeling pretty comfortable. I wanted to leave some in my tank in case anyone attacked up the false flat and the little hill that goes under 495. The attack never came, or if it did, it wasn?t very definitive (nor hard to cover), so we road the rest of the lap grouped together until the Dunkin donuts. That?s when some guy went off the front from Velo 545. And everyone waited a second, then Jeremy took off and it was on. As we climbed that final incline before coming to the base of the hill, I moved outside an positioned myself around 4th or so for the final sprint climb.

I accelerated into the hill, and shifted my front chainring down to the middle ring. I stood, applied power, and bang, my chainring shifted down into the granny gear up front (Yes, I have three rings, it?s how the bike came, I know no better). I tried shifting the chainring back up to the middle ring but my fingers were too numb and couldn?t apply pressure properly and then I worried about having a total misshift?so I sprinted it out, spinning like a mad man up the hill (or more like Fred Flinstone starting his Flintmobile) getting passed by four or so riders. I was bummed because I could actually power up that hill pretty nicely in the right gearing.

I settled for 9th. I?m not disappointed. First time finishing in the top ten. First time earning upgrade points. And the third race in a row that I?m showing finishing consistently. I keep entering the race expecting to get dropped, but now it looks like I?m settling in to the top 25% of the peloton regularly.