Arizona State Road Race Championship Race Report

Now, I’m not a cyclist. Or, at least I wasn’t. My ankle’s been giving me fits ever since my injury and I’ve gone through every doc in the Tucson book with little love, so I’ve finally accepted that I need to lay off it for a while.

OK, so I’m a cyclist now. Let’s race.

Last weekend was the AZ State Road Race Championship in the garden spot of Globe, AZ. I fly over Globe weekly, and I know for a fact there’s not much down there. I mean not much at all. Good terrain for cycling, though. I decided at the last minute to race, and all (both) of the hotels in town were booked, so we drove up the morning of the race. It meant a 3am wakeup, but traffic was light!

The course was perfect! My ideal course involves some flat sections with rolling hills, and a 1500 foot climb either up to or just prior to the finish. This is going to be fun (and will hurt). There were a lot of Trisports.com teammates in the race. Triathletes in the road race…it was good to see. I’m feeling good on my 15lb Cannondale SuperSix and with this climb, I’m loving my Q-Rings. Bring it!

We start. We ride easy out for a while, then one of my Trisports.com teammates starts a tempo effort off the front to the bottom of the first climb. A little early, but we go. We drop the majority of the pack on the first climbs, but most of them catch back up on the descents. Some of the sprinters put in small attacks on the rollers, but no one gets away. This said, we arrive at the bottom of the last major climb in one big pack. Now it gets fun!

We pick up the pace a little and start pulling a few off the back of the pack. By about a mile up the pack is down to 12 and holding steady. I’m riding 3rd, then 2nd. As the leader pulls off, I attack. When I sit back down, we’re 8 or so. So off I go again. And then there were 6. So I go again. 5. Then 4 on the next attack. At what I assess as a mile from the summit, I put in a big attack, hoping to break the group (and trying to not break myself). It works. I pull ahead and ride as hard as I can for the last mile. Nope, it was 3 miles from the summit. Oops. “Owwie. Stay ahead. This hurts. Please let the summit be around the next corner.”

One guy caught me at the top, and it was a good thing so we could work together to stay ahead on the final descent and flat section. We even caught up to the Cat 4 guys who started 3 minutes in front. At the 1km mark, I find myself on Ryan’s wheel. And there I sit. Ryan goes into a sprint at about 600m, I stay with him, then give it everything I have left at 400m to go. It works.

I pull off after the line, stop the bike, and lay down ready to pass out, vomit, go into convulsions, and celebrate all at the same time. I congratulate Ryan and the rest of the guys, go grab some water, and begin to wonder how it is that a triathlete can win a road race. I still haven’t figured it out.

Thanks to Cannondale for the great SuperSix, Zipp for the 404s, Rotor Cranks for the Q-Rings, and Hammer Nutrition for keeping my energy up in training.

Brian