The last week of May and the first couple weeks of June saw no local racing on the calendar, but we've still been putting in plenty of time on the bike - we've been able to get in some long training rides over the weekends, and have gotten our weekly dose of intensity at the Tuesday/Thursday Butler-Hinkle hammer-fest. The Indiana State Road race had originally been scheduled for June 14, but the race had to be rescheduled (new race date is July 19th) due to the thunderstorms that pounded central & southern Indiana the entire weekend.
Myself, MJ, Jolivette, Slattery, and Robison were all up bright and early on June 22 to make the trip down to Spencer, IN to race the McCormick's Creek Road Race, held on a 4 mile circuit with a series of 3 short, back-to-back-to-back climbs you hit every lap. Usually, road races start out kinda slow, as everyone takes the first couple of miles to warm up the legs before the hammer starts to drops - not so with this race. There was no 'casual roll-out' - the attacks started immediately, which resulted in probably half the pack getting dropped in the first two laps. At the start of the second lap, three riders attacked and were able to get a decent gap. I was able to bridge up solo, and catch on just before we hit the 3 climbs. We had gotten a large gap in a very short period of time, but we were not working well together, which usually spells doom for break. Sure enough, we were caught within a few miles. For the rest of the race, the whole team rode a tactically strong race - we were always well positioned riding in the top 1o of the pack, covered any attacks, and pushed to keep the pace high. The only thing we didn't do right was nail the last 200 meters - about 2 miles from the finish, two riders escaped off the front, and Jolivette and I went immediately to the front to reel them back in. We caught them with maybe a half mile to go. Slattery came charging up the right side of the road, yelling at us to grab his wheel. Jolivette and I latched on, and the three of us were sitting top five, hitting is as hard as we could with the pack strung about behind. Things were setup great, but we hit it a bit to hard too early, ran out of gas, and got swarmed by the pack with 200 meters to go. Even though we blew the finish, we had ridden by far our best team race in years. Hopefully, it a sign of good things to come!
