#132: Tour of Arkansas, day 1
Only 25 Cat 3’s lined up but you can bet all were climbers……
Road race starts on Mt. Magazine, descend down, loops around 61 miles, and finishes with a 5 mile climb back up the mountain.
I got into a break at about 10 miles and stayed away with several others (the composition changed over the course of the break) for about 15 miles. After the catch, attacks were popping off like crazy since the race was dominated by two northwest Arkansas teams, Accelerade and Tyson with probably 11-12 between them. Somewhere in there the magic break that included those teams went. I tried all sorts of things from bridging to chasing to organizing the rest (only a few seemed to even care), but in the end the field didn’t want it. The break had 5 minutes at base of the climb. Lots of rested legs meant I was pretty much screwed coming into the climb. I couldn’t hang with the group.and ended up riding up the climb with another guy conversational pace since our place was locked. I ended up 18th.
In the afternoon, only about 5 hours later, we had to race a 22 mile TT. The terrain for this is pretty much like the Sparta TN state TT course in that is moderately rolling. I ended up rolling a 49:44 (self timed) which is just under 25 mph (which was my target). I don’t know where that puts me, but I am happy with my run especially after this morning.
Tomorrow is a late afternoon crit in Van Buren. Hopefully I scored some points on the TT (top 10 gets points for ominum).
The cool thing about this weekend is the hotel. The Mt. Magazine lodge is nice. The hours between the RR and TT saw our room getting heavy use as most of Team Kenda were laying around recuperating. Andrea did well in the RR netting a 3rd place (albeit due to the two leaders going off course at the top…you gotta know the course..this one was not complicated). Her team is in pretty good shape, but a lot will depend on how they stacked up in the TT (don’t know at this point).
