Race Report Men’s A:

Me – 2^nd, Alex 3^rd, Joe P. 11^th

We raced at 8am, and pre-rode the gravelly, rutted, pot-holed, pavement-with-large-lumps, corners-with-gravel, and mouse maze-like “course.”

The meandering course was 5.5 miles through a military base. The first lap was marked with about 10 attacks, either Alex or I was in every one. Harrison Tripp attacked and Joe got on that fast. There was some potential, but nothing stuck. Then, we hammered down the road….and into a cul-de-sac dead end alley….game off. Hilarious, we got lost…and the moto-ref paced us into the dead end. Hilarity ensued.

We finally got back onto course, and then after the first full lap, Evan Picket (cat 1, Stanford) among a Davis dude, and both Alex and I attacked hard. I just did 10 seconds as hard as I could. Neither of us two knew the other attacked as I was on the right, and alex on the left side. I wasn’t sure if this was good, as 2 UCLA guys wasn’t going to make anyone happy.

Alex, Picket and I hammered as hard as we could, and a small gap formed. Then we continued to hammer, suffer, and I wanted to die while opening a bigger gap. I was worried – we were at SLO, and there were about 20 SLO guys. Martinez (cat 1, UCSB) wasn’t with us, and he wasn’t going to be happy either in the pack. So, odds were not in our favor. While getting the break established, we were going so hard – I thought about what coach Ron said, “if you are in the break, you can’t give up…EVER.” I then told myself, “Body, do what I tell you to,” and continued to suffer. Ayeh dealt with the pain of seeing insane power numbers by placing his helmet on the screen as he got low and aero taking pulls at the front.

The laps kept coming, and the pain never let up. Finally, at 3 laps to go, I started to believe that we might pull it off, with the gap opening to over 60 seconds. So, we had spent 2 hours in the break, 10 of 11 laps, so 55 miles off the front. Evan picket attacked into the final turn, and gapped both Alex and I, taking first. I then firmly instructed the Davis rider to “sit the F up” since he took exactly 2 pulls over the entire 2 hour breakaway.

Summary – Alex has enough points for Cat 2, and I need 2 more! That’s some teamwork.

- John Heiss