Monday Extra: My road race report.

Since everybody wants to read about the details of the lower category local area road races, I thought I should report on mine.

I was pretty sure I was about roughly as good as a cat 3 rider and after a couple of races in the cat 5s, I'd prove that I should just be placed up in the cat 3s.  I didn't know anything about upgrades.  I figured they probably just looked at you or something and they could tell.

There had been a crit or something already that season.  I don't remember where it was, but newcomer, cat 5 Jon Randell won it.  I had never met Jon, but his name sounded to me like he was probably pretty fat.  I was so sad that I hadn't signed up for that race because I was pretty sure I would have won and this Jon Randell character would have had to settle for second place where he deserved.  Stupid fatass I'd never met.

A couple of weeks later, there was another race I didn't do (this was in the Armstrong days.  There were lots of races without beer handups).  Jon Randell won that one.  Nebraska cycling quoted him, "That was fun.  You guys do this every year?" or something.  I thought, "It won't be so fun when I'm kicking your fat ass, Randell.  Why don't you just give up now and go race clydesdale in mountain biking?"

That was it.  I had to race.  I had already placed pretty high in RAGBRAI the year before and then bought a new LeMond Zurich with the fancy integrated brake shifter things.  I had raced the Corporate Cycling Challenge Super Serious Race on it and was pretty happy with my performance there.  There was the one guy riding on a mountain bike with jean shorts who dropped me like I was standing still, but otherwise I figured I was the fastest guy out there (at the Corporate Cycling Challenge Super Serious Race) that day.

So the first road race I signed up for was held at Branched Oaks.  It was 2 laps around the lake.  It was a calm day.  Ok, I can't keep a straight face.  It's never a calm day at the lake.

I looked around for a fat guy in an Athletic Junction Jersey, but only saw Munson and a shorter athletic looking guy.  Uh oh.

Jon Randell was nowhere near as fat as his name made him sound.

So the 18 or so cat 5 racers took off down from Lieber's point to the start of the actual racing.  As we turned onto the road heading north to make the first ascent, I was dropped.  It took 9:23 seconds for me to get dropped.  About 8 minutes of that were neutral rollout.

I rode solo  for those 2 laps as hard as I could around the course for about 2 hours (I finished 3 laps quicker Saturday).  I was too dumb to know at the time that I would not catch the group that had dropped me.  I finished.  Second to last place (of the finishers).  People said something about "at least you finished" but I didn't feel too good about it.  Nobody seemed to think I should upgrade to Cat 3 either.

I had some work to do if I was going to win my next race.  Especially after Randell had instantly lost all that weight in my mind.