After a water logged Snelling Road Race I was hoping the forecasted weather for Merco would hold true. I wasn’t dissappointed. Blue skies, light wind 60 degree temps were a welcome change to last weeks cold and wet race.
Erik met me at my house around 5:30am. Put his bike and kit in my truck and we were rolling by 5:45am. We arrived at the race venue around 7:40am or so. Took a little longer than the drive to Snelling because you have to go around Turlock Lake to get to the race area. Parked on the road and walked over to registration. Stood in the long line (porta-potties)and the much shorter line (registration). Erik bought a breakfast burrito off one of the vendors there and scarfed that down before heading out. Went back and got kitted up and rode up and down the road to warm up. Erik was in the 35+ 4’s race and they started 5 minutes after the 4’s. Bid him good luck and went to the staging area.
Erik was on the 4’s wait list. When he tried to get in they said it was all full. So I guess we had a full field of 100 to start. Being all alone I looked for a few friendly faces to chat with. Three FFBC alums were there: Oscar, Tim, and German. All BBC dudes now so had someone to talk to during the race. For awhile at least. Both Oscar and German had mechanicals that caused them to DNF. The race official said there would be some potholes and rough roads out on course. She wasn’t kidding. The roads were mostly okay but one section was so torn up it was like riding on cobbles.
Whistle blows and were off. No parade lap here. Racing from the get go. Lots of team work right away. Roaring Mouse’s Hank Scholz was rocking the BAR jersey after winning the Merced Crit and Snelling last weekend. He was a marked man and, he wasn’t going off in a break today. Pretty much nobody was going off the front for very long. A few long mild rollers to start out on Keyes Rd. lead to to a mostly flat course. A few more mellow rollers and a couple of short quick descents bring you to the left turn on Cox Ferry Road. This is area with the jacked up pavement. Flat and straight for a bit before the long rollers that mark the end of Cox Ferry. The turn back onto Keyes is fast as you are descending the backside of a roller. This turn brings you onto the portion of the course that is also used in the Snelling race. Luckily the mud was gone and Lake Snelling had dried up. The first lap was pretty fast. A couple of dudes did some offroading and crashed but, for the most part an uneventful lap. Second lap starts mellow enough but you can almost feel the nervous energy. I spent most of the race in the top 30 or so. Some teams were trying to stay grouped together for the end. About halfway through lap #2 I was getting a drink when I hit a road reflector with only one hand loosely on the hoods. Didn’t go down or take anyone out but, made me pay closer attention to what was going on. I figured if someone wanted to make a last ditch break effort they would do it on the rollers on Cox Ferry. So I moved up to the top 15 or so for those. The pace picked up but nobody got away. I dug deep and crested the last roller in the top ten suprisingly. Got through the turn on Keyes and tried to recover for the finish. The typical surges through the S turn on Keyes caused me to slip back a bit farther. I totally misjudged the distance to the start finish line. Thought we had farther to go. Ended up finishing 59th at the tail end of the leading group. Happy to finish but a little irritated I screwed up on the mileage. Race was around 47 miles not the 48 quoted distance. No biggie though.My computer showed 1 hour 57 minutes for the race for about 24 mph average, pretty quick. Still had a cramping issue with my calves. Might be time to look again at bike fit and cleat positioning.
Mike Baxter