Our win at the Fast & Furious crit on Sunday was a great team effort and I tip my hat to my teammates for helping me capture my first road win. The guys did such a great job of helping to keep the break away. Bike racing is so much frick’n fun when the team work happens and it works! I was getting info from a fan on the guys were working to keep us away and that just fed my desire to suffer and make it work. Kudo’s to everyone for making it happen.
Here’s how it went down from my perspective.
I was covering a bridge attempt. The break had several strong guys in it including David Studner. When we got to the break at corner 1 the guys sat up and looked to be giving up on it. I jumped it right away just prior to the group being caught and just prior to the head wind section. I encourage Doug (independent guy who’s been really active in our races) to jump on and he did. Initially, it seemed impossible that it would work with just two but I was feeling good and was committed to it. My confidence was rocked a little when I looked at the lap count and it was only at 7 minutes into the race. With more than 40 minutes to go, I knew I was going to need my mates in the pack to help me stay away – and boy did they ever. I tried not to think about how much further but instead focused on resting when Doug was pulling up the home stretch and pushing my pulls into the head wind section. We sorted out that rotation really quickly since Doug was telling me he was uncertain how much and how long he was going to be able to work with me. With each time gap report growing slowly and with the time ticking down it became more and more feasible that it was going to work…if I could keep the pressure on. Doug thought he was going to pop several times but I kept encouraging him to hang in there for one more lap….since that was running through my head over and over…just one more lap. The toughest section was from laps 10 to 5 to go. I rested a little extra around 7 to 5 laps to go thinking that we were going to have to hold off a pack that would be hard for my teammates to control. We had about 35 seconds at that point. At 5 to go I worked extra hard on that back stretch and extended my pulls up the home stretch. At about 3 laps to go Doug told me he was not going to contest the sprint. Up until then, I really tried not to think about how I was going to muster up something extra to deal with Doug for the win. I tried to focus solely on being committed to my maximum sustain effort and make the break work was my only priority. Around 5 to go I started thinking about it. I was not going to leave it to a sprint since I could tell that he was really struggling to hold on and I really don’t know what kind of sprinter I am – estimating somewhere between mediocre to poor – certainly inexperienced. The plan was to jump him after his pull at 2 laps to go just prior to corner. Actually, I don’t think I had it that well planned out but that would have been the best plan.
Thanks again, it felt great to deliver knowing how much abuse and hard work my teammates put out.
Mike Meteyer
Ps I wont be trying to bunny hop any more curbs until cross season. So the header I took after the race to go see my daughter and friends who were cheering for me will not be any sort of post-race tradition.
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