Poor College Kids Road Race, Zaca Canyon

After 1/2 a week of storms rained down on our little palm lined paradise above the beach our 5th Year Team Platinum photos were snapped. Soon thereafter my goals for my first foray into road racing started to change. 10 miles into "Sunday Worlds" my lungs were seared from redlining to stay in contact with the pack. I went straight at the polo fields towards Carpinteria and joined Aaron in a comfortable spin back along Padaro Ln. to Santa Barbara. I was starting to worry about riding that fast for that far.

Prior to "worlds" I had some delusions of grandeur about mixing it up with the podium frequenting experts from the mountain side of our team in the beginning Cat 5 road racing bunch. Todd was already lobbying the race organizer before we rolled out of the Cabrillo beach house to get us all racing at the same time and subgroup, so real race plans started to hatch regarding our strategy. The windy Sunday revealed that I should expect and plan a survival ride rather than a race on my part. So I set a goal first not to crash, second not to get dropped before the long descent, and lastly to make it back to Santa Barbara by 11:30am so I could grab a quick shower and lunch before a busy afternoon schedule at work.

I tried my best to get my legs to recover during the week just lightly spinning during some short lunch time rides and threw in a few short sprints to check how my soreness was progressing on Thursday. Roger had warned me of the dangers of getting dropped on the first hill past Firestone so Friday I did two hill repeats on Via Chapparal and 192 up to LaCumbre to give myself some confidence.

My goals changed again as I rode home realizing that I had just bent my rear rim. With no time to run out to Bob's; I started calling in favors to try get it fixed or find a spare. Now my goal was to be able to get to the starting line with a working bike. Apparently, after a few broken spokes and more than a few truing sessions recently; truing the rim wasn't going to be a good option, as it was bent between the paired spokes and turning into a potato chip shape the more Sam worked with it. Todd's previous jeer, "Luke has an old school bike," started to ring true after the fifth volunteer repeated, "Oh, . . . no mine's a ten speed cog set." Nisbet was nice enough to offer to swap out his cassette the day of the race but I prayed that wouldn't be needed. Team Masseur Kim Lyons was my heroine with a late night phone call offering up her 9 speed rear wheel. I met her at 7am at the farmer's market, threw her wheel on my old steel bike and headed to Santa Ynez.

The Platinum tent was up as I rolled onto Zaca Canyon road, with all the rushing around to get a wheel I hadn't had time to get the butterflies out of my stomach. The organization and registration definitely felt like college kids were running things. Asking racers to fill out forms that didn't exist. Charging for one day licenses that were part of the registration fees that we had already paid during online preregistration. Getting in arguments with the faculty/staff advisor over semantics and where to make the lines. I didn't expect that to come back to bite me halfway into the race.

After taking delivery of my new Rudy helmet and sunglasses I did some small chin strap adjustments and I was ready to get warmed up. A bit of a nip in the valley air was apparent once we started rolling. At the line up a Newberry Park team in smurf blue jerseys reading Fast Fridays were looking around and asking about captain Todd, trying to get a mark on the man. They took the first 7 positions on the line and held them in military like formation for the first 6 miles complete with commands on rotating back and forth and right to left. This was a huge disappointment because our game plan was to get lined up first to get an epic Goodman Graphics action shot with the rest of the group behind us coming right off the start. Silva started to give them a hard time with a facetious follow up to there self congratulatory banter to Wayne who had just pulled for a few minutes at the front or their team wedge. They had obviously spent great time and thought practicing and organizing their pace control tactics. I was happy I wasn't the only one too lazy to shave his legs in the 5A group.

With the center line rule in effect it was hard to change position at all from where we started but I worked at getting as close to the front of the pack by the first hill by riding on the center line as I knew I would give up ground to the pack once the hill started. It wasn't as steep as I imagined but surprised me with another hundred feet of climbing after a long false flat. I was out of breath and off the back as I saw the pack stretch out and start rapidly descending, but I quickly reintegrated as I screamed down the fun descent. Before I knew it the Cat 3 group was in front of us and that caused some chaos as we worked around them with dozens swerving out into the oncoming lane that was open to traffic.

I worked my way back to the front where the Platinum train was rolling, Todd, Bob, Chase, and Derek along with a couple others randoms were taking turns pulling at 27mph as Fast Friday was down to four members who were looking comfortable drafting 8 or 10 spots off the front. I took a second to look around and it had turned into a beautiful day to ride through wine country. A barn under construction was our marker that the turnaround was coming soon. I took a brief 30 second pull at the front which Aaron had warned me against after worlds the week before; to conserve energy on the way out, "it's much longer back."

As the flags of the course Marshall's came into view I knew why this was the "college kids" race and not the college graduates race. Half of the student volunteers stood on one side of the cones half on the other, each waving a different direction. One girl yelled, "stay to the the right of the cones," another flag wielding student screamed, "keep the cones on your right." As the last two thirds of the pack turned into each other clipping out of the pedals and cursing, the front seem to explode back up the rise we had just descended. My legs and lungs were screaming for mercy as I tried to hang on to the stragglers at the back but I watched the gap grow and knew I was toast.

Mile 18 to 21 were very lonely and slow, I briefly tried to wind myself back up as the Cat 3's came by but couldn't hold their pace either. Finally a group of 4 of us formed until the hill and the next group started to come by. By the top I was able to latch onto a mixed bag of cat 5, 3, and 2? riders for a more comfortable descent back to start finish 1h:29m-33rd place.

Overall I was glad to finish, Road Racing seems to be a extremely different level of conditioning and effort than mountain; but was very fun and punishing at the same time. I was happy to hear at the finish that Platinum strategy paid off in a win for our new teammate Derek Johnson. As a fellow Clydesdale I can only hope he can't technically descend or can't make weight if I have any chance of winning in the coming MTB season. Big thanks to: Todd for getting us our new Rudy Kits, John Goodman for the photos, website, and our new sharp kit design, Roger for keeping my "old school" bike rolling, Steve Silva for comic relief, and my wife for putting up with dawn patrol alarm clocks.

A Pre-Race 6:30am breakfast. Needing a boost back over the Clydesdale threshold a large yogurt with platinum topping helps after a hearty breakfast.