MOB Race Report: June 2-3

"This weekend has the return of Mike Sharp to the peloton. Welcome back from that crash injury.

Mario Camacho
Team Director

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Full Weekend of Racing

7.7.07
From Mario Camacho

The Great Race:
From Toby

Hi, everybody. I was the lone MOB entrant in the Cat 3 crit and RR up in Elkhart this weekend. The weather turned out great, the fields were medium-sized, and the racing was weird. I'll spare you the suspense and let you know that there's no happy ending.

Criterium: Four-corner, short lap in downtown Elkhart. Nice pavement, wide corners, very fast and safe. There were a few large teams there--Honeywell, Koehlinger, and Swanson all had 5+ guys. There were a few IHCs and Tortugas as well. I was feeling good and waiting to see if a break would develop that contained those teams. A couple of times I jumped the gap when it looked promising, only to see everyone sit up as soon as I arrived. It also seemed like some teams, especially Swanson, were chasing down breaks that contained their own guys. I flatted about 35 minutes in, and there's the lesson for the day: yes, it's worth the extra 3 minutes it will take to get the spare wheels out of the car. Swanson's sprinter wound up winning by coming around Felipe at the line.

Then there was a biker vs. inline skater 100-yard dash. Vic Emond and Abby managed to beat the skaters, earning an easy $50 each. Who says Dan is stingy with payout?

Elkhart has the best bike lane system I've seen in Indiana.

Road race: by far the craziest course setup I've ever been on. The course doubled back on itself, there was a charity ride going on at the same time, there were no escort vehicles, there was a hairpin turn full of sand with a broom lying in the middle of it. Half the pack (including me) rode right past the first turn because the marshal had taken a potty break. We caught the 123 race at the end of the first lap (14 miles in) because we had 40 guys and they had 14, and of course the guys at the front of our race decide "we need to pass them right this second, even though we're coming up on a sandy left turn." We managed to get through that safely, but it wasn't pretty. There were several short steep climbs on the course that really demanded the small ring, but about 3/4 of the field was too macho to admit that, so there was a lot of bobbing and weaving as we went over. Not really sure what the thinking is there--I'm too tough for the small ring? I need to stand up and stretch my legs? I forgot to adjust my front derailer? Whatever. Lesson for this race: yes, you really have to pay attention all the time, even when you're coming into a soft turn at 15 mph. I didn't keep my front wheel clean, rubbed the guy in front of me, lost control and rode into the embankment on the side of the road. Everything was fine except my stem was twisted and I didn't have a tool to recenter it. I rode slowly backwards to the finish where my inlaws were just arriving to watch. I'm not sure who won; we were on our way to Das Dutchman Essenhaus by that point.

I'm bummed about those mishaps, but I was very pleased that I felt strong in each race. After I crashed out in the RR and was riding back, I realized we had actually split the field, and that I had made the split without even noticing that it was happening.

Didn't exactly do the jersey proud, but I'm fired up for next time. Hope you had a great holiday.

Tobias

St. Crispan Cat 4's:
From Mark Dewart

Cat 4's
Neal Forbes, Doug Rees, Chris Toffolo, Graham Dewart and Mark Dewart raced the 2007 version of the St. Crispian course today. The course seemed to be very similar to last year. We did 2 laps of a 24-25 mile hilly loop that climbed out of creek valleys, ran up on top for a short time, then 40 mph descents took us back down to the valley bottoms. There were 3-4 climbs with stretches that pitched up sharply and had everyone out of the saddle in their lowest gears. At the finish line I had 50 miles covered at an average pace of 22.0 mph. Did you guys get something like this too? I would like to brag a little about that pace if it is true. Did we really do that??

Neal, Chris and Graham were up front for almost the whole race. Riders were shifting into bigger gears as fast as they could going over the tops of the hills because these guys were keeping the pace so high. Doug was strong all day. He was moving up when he needed to and as he moved around he always recognized the effort of teammates with encouraging words. We faced that final climb to the finish line together and all finished in the lead group. Sorry, I lost track of everyone's exact finish but Neal, Doug, Chris and Graham are going to end up with strong finishes. Graham was riding in with cassette problems and Chris and I were trying to finesse pedal strokes in the last half mile when we needed to be going hard because we were cramping. We rode so hard today that our bikes and legs were literally falling apart at the end! Thanks you guys. Because nobody got any rest at the tops of the hills we dropped riders that would have been around at the end to pass me while I was fighting off those cramps on the final climb to the finish. Good race!

Mark Dewart

Cat 2/3's
Josh needs to send a report but he represented the team well. He attacked with some other guys and created the break of the day. He finished strong for 5th place.

Master's 40+
Mike Sharp continues his comeback and takes the line again in this tough category. His legs did not fail him as he finished the day in 13th. Look for this guy to continue building strentgh and causing havic on the race course.

Thank you for reading this weekends racing reports.

Take Care
Mario Camacho

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