The 1st Race

This past weekend I traveled to Lake Mary to take part in my first official bike race of the season.

I took with me the confidence gained by competing in the last two races of the "Bring It On" crit series at the Progress Park put on by Dan and Rebecca Larson (I was busy wrecking myself in Vegas for the first of the 3 races). I had placed 5th and 3rd respectfully and was looking forward to testing myself in a full Cat. 4 field.

It was a beautiful day, if you don't mind a high of 53 degrees with 20+ mph winds that made it feel like 40 degrees.

The cat. 4 race was scheduled as the last race of the day so my wife and I did some visiting with my parents who live just 15 minutes from the race site and squeezed in lunch with my best friend who also lives in the Orlando area.

Before running to lunch I did catch a few of the guys who were racing the cat. 5 race earlier in the morning. Scott, Rodrigo and James Penrod (Santos bike shop) all gutted out the cold race and finished strong.

An interesting note: In these pictures, Scott isn't wearing arm-warmers...why you ask. Well Scott's son, Justin, had just finished his juniors race and was wearing Scott's arm-warmers on his legs as leg-warmers. There wasn't enough time to make the switch before the cat. 5's were called to the line for the start.


Here is Scott Pfaff (GCC jersey, no arm-warmers). Rodrigo is just off of Scott's left shoulder with the silver helmet and pink cycling cap underneath it.


I've highlighted Scott in this picture, otherwise you'd never see him way in the back! click on image for larger view

As mentioned before, Justin Pfaff raced in the juniors race early in the day. Justin is only 9 years old (he races in the 10-12 age group because he's going to be turning 10 this calendar year) and he was out there tearin it up. How many 9 year olds do you know who are riding their bikes as fast as they can on a freezing morning at some Office park in Orlando? Stick with it Justin, you'll be smokin' your dad in no time.


Here's Justin with one of his competitors from Treasure Coast cycling club. (Justin dropped this kid with 3 laps to go)

My race finally started and I was admittedly nervous for the first 10-15 minutes. It was a large field and the attacks came right from the word "go".

I got settled in and felt comfortable with the speed, but I had trouble at times with positioning. Everyone seemed hyper-aggressive and finding the best line through corners wasn't always the easiest thing. The wind on the back side of the course was pushing everyone all over the place and made for some tight racing at times.

I was able to react to the attacks and counter-attacks (most of which came from Brett Miller (UF)) and was able move around in the group, although it wasn't always easy.

With 5 laps to go, the pace pick up and the field was strung out in a long line. I was able to get up into the front 15-20 which kept me from having to sprint out of each corner. We slowed again with just a couple to go and it seemed that the guys at the front were all just waiting to see who would jump first.

There was a crash at the start/finish line with one to go, but it was behind me so I was thankfully unaffected. Brett Miller made his move off the front on that last lap and pretty much rode away from the field. He held the gap all the way to the line and won the race. I would find out on the cool down lap from Brett that he had actually flatted before the last corner. How he kept the bike upright is beyond me, let alone how the flat didn't impede his eventual victory. I'd like to think I had a hand in his win, maybe by some blocking or a great lead-out, but the truth is that Brett is riding super strong and won that thing all on his own.

During that last lap I jumped on the wheel of what looked like a cat. 4 Pettachi, hoping that he would get me close enough for me to launch my own sprint and get me into the top-10. Unfortunately, Pettachi was a dud. A line of about ten guys went inside of us through the last corner and I was only able to muster 18th place.

I've got another race under my belt and some things to work on for future races.