FLCC> Tuesday night A's

[Glenn Swan]

Matt Plumb pretty much summed up the action and the pain of the A-Race. We 
were looking for a little more course than the usual Tuesday night Ringwood 
stuff because these are good long days and because everyone is pretty much 
in their top physical condition for the summer (except Fitterer and Bayles, 
of course).

When we rolled out I was afraid that the additional lap and difficulty of 
the route would cause the race to be negative, as people try to conserve 
themselves for the later hills. That notion was quickly dispelled as 
attacks went right away. When Matt and Brian were 20 seconds up the road 
and there was not enough response from the field, I worried that they might 
get a good gap and leave me to try to mobilize a bunch of guys who are all 
"waiting for someone else to do the work"....  I have succeeded in 
breakaways many times in the past because I capitalized on just such a 
mindset in the chasing group. So before the gap got bigger than I could 
hope to cross alone, I launched an attack and nearly fried myself getting 
to them. To my dismay, shortly after I got there Brian folded up his tent 
and drifted back to the field, and Matt wisely decided that it would be 
folly for us to hammer away when there was a lot of horsepower (plus the 
Timmerman wildcard) not far behind, and lots of climbing up ahead. I 
planned to keep the pressure on so that weaker riders would be culled from 
the chasing herd, but I had more than a little recovering to do after my 
effort to bridge across to the break. Often when the road tipped up or when 
there were surges in the pace, it seemed as though it was Matt and me at 
the front. Other faces would appear and hop on the bus in case we could 
pull out of the station, but it was mostly Matt who was in the driver's 
seat. Danny pushed our pain buttons and had his finger on the "eject" 
button on Hurd Rd. each lap, but was relatively merciful. He must have 
preferred having our company even if none of us had enough working brain 
cells or oxygen to make intelligent and witty conversation, so he refrained 
from just riding away from us.  As we neared the end game, Ano Garcia came 
to life and matched pace with Danny, leaving Brian and Matt and me to 
struggle to catch up. It seemed to me that Brian, and especially Matt, 
would take a hard pull and get most of the way across but then suddenly 
lose steam and fall back. Time after time I would be gapped a little, but 
if I stuck to my own max pace I would claw them back and go to the front 
only to have them come flying by again. As I heard someone say earlier in 
the race, "Wash, rinse, repeat..." It seemed possible that this would be 
Ano's night as he rode strongly and smoothly with Danny while the rest of 
us were thrashing ourselves in pursuit. I was hopeful that on the final 
pitch to the finish the others would burn out as I had been observing 
during the surging chase up Ringwood, and I would be able to inherit the 
top spot. Indeed, Matt's legs seized up on the penultimate climb, and Ano 
started to lose steam. It was looking like a head-to-head battle with Brian 
(with Danny being a wildcard, possibly affecting how Brian and I would go 
into the last climb).  I hoped to take a flyer off Brian's wheel as he lost 
momentum going into the steep climb, but whether it was his strategy or 
not, he seemed to slow just a little too much for my plans, making me 
overtake him in the bottom of the dip rather than part of the way up. I 
used my brakes scrubbing valuable momentum, and although I got a small gap 
on him at the bottom, his toughness and determination, plus more endurance 
than I was hoping he would have, led to him not only catching back up to 
me, but also pulling away in the last 50-100m. Ano wasn't far behind, and 
then Matt limped in, with only about half of his usual muscle fibers 
firing, and those in random order, like a car with the spark plug wires 
switched. We were all toasted, and grateful that is was all over, and 
grateful for the challenges that had been thrown at us.  These rides are 
why Ithaca has more high level racers than most cities twice its size. We 
play hard...we have fun. Even if it hurts.

Glenn