State RR

Justin and I headed north of Manhattan to the Olsburg RR to compete for the state RR title. For the last few years, the race had been held in Arma, which was a fine course but was a little flat for my tastes (and usually very hot, ~105 by the finish last year) So it was nice to mix it up a bit.

The Olsburg course was really cool, with good pavement and some nice climbs on the second half of the course, plus a tough 500m pitch about 10k from the finish line that served as the KOM point. The Tall Grass Stage Race the week before had also used this RR course, in reverse, which would have also been awesome I think.

Unfortunately, only 3 of us came out for the Cat 1/2 race, which was probably due to 3 other races going on over the weekend and no payouts whatsoever. Anyway, Jack Mason was the other competitor in our field. He has been riding very well this season, so I was interested to see how things would play out. The first few miles were pretty mild, Jack started to take some short digs prior to getting to the climbs. So I countered just to see what would happen, and got a minute gap very quickly. So I just held things at a minute and watched to see how things were playing out behind. Jack was chasing pretty well, and Justin was pulling through too, which made me think he was also feeling pretty good, so after the first lap I sat up and let them back on. Jack knew what was going down at this point. We rode steadily until we got back to the climbs. Over the KOM JB and I just kept upping the pace until we dropped Jack. At the top I drilled it over the flat section before we descended and then just kept the gas on all the way through the finish line. We had a pretty good gap, probably over a minute, but I didn't want to have Jack come back up to us, so I stayed at the front for most of the first half of the last lap as well. We made it back to the climbs on the last lap and were finally able to relax a bit and just go steady through the hills. We got Justin some water at the feed zone and cruised in to go 1-2 for the race.Poor Jack ended up having a really bad day and bonking big time on the last lap.