Mead Roubaix

This was my second adventure at a dirt road, road race. I have to tell you, racing in a pack on a dirt road with people I don’t know the skill level of is a little scary. Especially since after pre-riding and seeing how much more challenging the road surface was compared to Boulder Roubaix a few weeks earlier. There were no terribly difficult obstacles but the soft, dare I say sand, was going to make the difference. This race wasn’t really important so the goal was to be safe and see what I could do. Safety suggested that I stay near the front, particularly on the dirt sections so that I stayed out of trouble.

Things seemed wrong almost from the start of the race. Even on the opening part of the race I felt like I was going backwards. I simply couldn’t maintain my position and found myself drifting to the back. When we hit the first dirt section I was in the back third. But the group managed to stay on track. The motor cycle judge was a little over zealous with the “yellow line rule”, I understand racing right but he was whistling at everything and we were stuck racing on a third of a crappy road. Great, thanks dude.

Once on through the first dirt section and onto the pavement, I followed a teammate to the front of the group. We rolled up just before what I would say was the worst section of the race, sandy and rough. So I stayed on the front and tried to see how the race would do under pressure. I was expecting someone to come around at anytime but they didn’t. So I slowed and slowed and no one came around. Then they came flying around before the hill. I slowly worked my way towards the back of the group and then I found myself grasping to tail end of a splintering pack. I ended up getting split off. I did manage to find a former teammate, Todd, in my little chase group.

 Todd and I have raced a lot of cyclocross together so I felt total comfortable on his wheel. I pretty much felt like I knew how he would ride in the sand and dirt and I knew I could trust him. We worked really well together trying to bridge back up. We had the lead group in our view but never caught up. We chased for two and a half laps, picking up stragglers and dropping them, seeing some crash wreckage go by. In the end we raced to the finish and had a little one on one sprint out. We were both pretty tired so maybe sprint isn’t the right word but we went for it finishing within a wheel length of each other for 14th and 15th. I like to think my bike throw at the end made the difference, but whatever; it was fun to have a good hard ride with a friend.

 Lap 1: hiding in the back.

Lap 2: After a strong pull from Todd we were trying to bridge back up.

Lap 3: Trying to finish strong and pick off a few more riders.