In St Joe this weekend for the St Joe road race and a family get-to-gether via cookout today. Dawndi and I will stay over tonight so that we can watch the Tour of Missouri start too.
The road race was a good one. Tons of volunteers, city employees and police assistance. Impressive they were able to gather up this kind of support. The course was nice too, rolling hills to get things started finished off with a long flat section through the park-way which has been a work in progress for several years. That section of road is 100% new making for an awesome finish stretch. The Tour will leave town on this same section of road tomorrow.
About 15 started my race. We started mixing things up right out of the gate, this was not going to be a 42 mile mellow group ride followed by a field sprint for sure. Average speed for the day was 23mph.
The final 15 miles is where the race made it's mark, just after the feedzone. There were so many break-away attempts during this section it was hard to mark them all and finally 4 guys slipped off the front; I missed the break.
With a gap that looked good enough to stick followed by a couple of failed attempts from the chase group to bring them back I took off to attempt a bridge. O' so close I got, seemed like I was 5 seconds off their tail where I knew a much needed break was awaiting me. Then I got hung up and could not maintain the effort as I had been out there working for way to long. I finally had to concede, falling back taking shelter in the chase group. Soon after 1 guy took off making a successful bridge making the lead group now 5.
After some much needed recovery I moved to the front of the chase group for an attempt to work with others to bring them back. Only 1 guy had the same idea as we worked our ass off to bring them back. We slowly began to make up ground, with just a few miles to go we almost had them but could not get that last bit needed to latch on, by then we had given all we had and it was over. We needed one more guy and I think we would have been successful.
I took it easy through the park-way to the finish coming home in 9th place.
Super fun race with great organization - thanks to Wes and his crew for a great day!
Jeff - Good racing and huge effort/workout. It is hard to figure sometimes - willing to race for 6th and not work to chase. Bring on the X. We have one more event -Chequamegon - before we start on the barriers.
ReplyDeleteJohn
The Vuelta will never amount to much with Tour of Missouri going on. How exciting is that. Good luck with your stage. I know you've done all the leg work to make it a great success for your town.
ReplyDeleteHey John,
ReplyDeleteHave a great Chequmagon race, hear Lance will be there too.
Tour of MO is a good thing for Hermann, Saturday should turn out well!