Sugarloaf weekend

I spent this past weekend in Clermont Florida at the Sugarloaf Mtn. Road Race (sat) and Ferndale Circuit Race (sun). Saturday I helped out with the registration in the morning and I drove the lead officials car for the Masters 35+ race in the afternoon. The race didn't seem too hard to me...but I was driving in an air-conditioned car, so that may have been why I didn't struggle up any of the ten-thousand, three-hundred and fifty-seven climbs on the course. I really don't think that there is a more difficult 11 miles anywhere in the southeast, and depending on which race you were in, you had to ride that loop five, six or seven times. The category 3 and catagory 4 race went off together (but was scored separately) and had a field of about 120 guys. The field was cut in half by the first of 5 ascents up Sugarloaf Mountain. And just to illustrate how strong the cat. 4 field is this year, four of the top five finishers of that race were cat. 4’s, not cat. 3’s (which sucks for the cat. 4 who placed higher than a cat. 3, but still received a payout of less money because they were scored separately and cat. 3’s had a larger purse for the race). Hats off to those of you who braved that course. Click on the title of this post to link to the results from this race.


As you can see in this picture taken from the top of the finishing climb, this course didn’t look too much like a Florida race.

Sunday was a flat 2.2 mile circuit race held in pretty much the same location as Saturday’s race. You can see the results from that race here. Since the course wasn’t a mountainous butt-kicker, or even a hilly leg-burner, I gave it a go. No results for me to report, but I did feel a lot more comfortable during this race compared to the past few races I’ve entered. I was able to make it up to the front when I wanted, I didn’t have any problems responding to attacks and I even pulled through on the front a few times. I still don’t have the legs to chase down a break and my big pop at the end of the race is more like a fizzle, but I feel like things are on the rise. I worked pretty well on the last lap to get myself to third or fourth wheel coming out of the final corner going into the fast sprint finish…but when I stood up to sprint, the kick just wasn’t there and I got swarmed pretty quick.

In other news…
The Giro had obviously started and Discovery has brought a strong team in support of Paolo Savoldelli. You can sign up here to get live streaming video of the race from OLN and here

I also read recently that OLN (Outdoor Life Network) will soon be changing their name to “Versus”…as in Man versus Nature or Basso versus Ullrich.