7/19/05 by Allied Decal Cycling Team
Over the past few months the race team has circulated many race tales of daring and not so daring adventures among the team riders. Finally, we've gotten around to posting them for all to see here. Enjoy.
Solstice Race #1 and Cyclebration-Delaware (June 10-11) by Denis Osowski
Solstice Friday night....big storms delay start till 7pm....finish almost in the dark.....Glenn grabs a bunch of aggressive rider points....Denis gets 1 aggressive rider point and gets in the top 15, maybe....Glenn and Jimmy finish in the field....Bob Grimm suffers flat......really fun race with euro pro like finish seeing Zak Derringer get caught 100m from victory after long breakaway try.
Saturday.....rain the morning...Bob and Glenn stay for Solstice #2.....Jimmy and Denis decide to go to Delaware crit....Jim G also there....small field of 20 to 25.....no rain.....fast race with lots of attacks and pace making (Chris Riccardi-WVHC, David Young-Orville, me) which force selection of 9 off the peleton with about 30 (??) laps of 40 to go....Denis and Jimmy make selection....Jim G caught behind....Jim G has very boring race tending to the field.....Denis, Riccardi, Young, Jimmy continue driving pace....2 more lost off break.....Young gets off front by 10 seconds.....Jimmy is sent in solo pursuit after pre-attack lead-out by Denis......chase ensues.....another split......Jimmy forward with 3 other riders.....Denis falls apart like cheap suit and is with two others who couldn't make it......one to go......Riccardi jumps on the long backside of the course....gets gap......Jimmy closes up.....Jimmy on Riccardi's wheel....2 more on his....Jimmy jumps Riccardi at 150m.....Jimmy, wins field sprint!! Denis attacks and drops the two with him to get 5th.
Rick Gorzynski Memorial Time Trial (June 19) by George Liolios
The Race of Truth no hiding behind excuses, I missed the break, got caught behind a crash, I was doing all the work and was attacked and missed the selection. Man and machine against the clock and your inner demons.
170 riders, partly sunny, 60 degrees and windy, 13th overall, 1st old guy.
Cyclebration-Springfield (June 24) by Denis Osowski
58 guys showed for the Tyler $5k extraveganza....and he really did pay it out. Amazing. Fast race but not hard if you sat in since the course was essentially flat, 4 lanes wide, and with 4 simple corners. Jim G and I were there. Breaks were being limited to no more than 10 or 12 seconds and there was lots of chase energy. With less than 10 (??) to go, John Minturn went away and it looked like the winner until yours truly decided that he wanted no part of the bunch sprint and went with 1-1/2 to go. It looked good at first as the initial jump gained a few seconds on the field (like 2 or 3) but 31 mph was not enough to keep the sprinters away and the catch was made just as I made contact with Minturn at 1/2 lap to go. Still managed to jump into the train and hold out for 12th against a couple of cat 4 road riders....who were cat 1's on the track. Jim G was not so fortunate as he was taken out with 3 to go but fortunately suffered only some road rash.
Cyclebration-Chagrin Falls (June 26) by Denis Osowski
Did someone say it was hot ? I've never raced in heat like that before except for maybe New Bremen a few years ago...some of you might remember that one. This was the hardest race that I've ever actually finished. Tyler did some tricks with the categories and threw all of the Torelli boys in our race...with a 30 second handicap that did no good at all except make 'em mad. Even with Torelli included, less than 20 started the race. From the start I felt bad. Then I felt worse. And then a little worse than that. It wasn't until about 10 to go out of 29 that I started feeling a little better (cuz it got slower) but I was still millimeters from the edge. Everything basically went up the road without me. I had no answer for the accelerations. Nevertheless, Ken Hiller and I did all the work in our chase group of 4 and we almost got up to the second group on the road and maybe I should have jumped across when it was close....maybe I should have put a gun to my head too....either of which may have had the same outcome....anyway, 7 places were up the road and Ken was a lap down which nobody including Ken knew (he thought he was given a free lap which he really wasn't). Finally, in the sprint for our group the two other guys tried to get around us but Ken lead out the sprint which wound up pretty much in the order that we hit the last turn.....which is what always happens in a Chagrin sprint. Ken beat me but he wasn't actually in the race so I got 8th...and in the money. I nearly passed out at the end I was so hot...actually I felt like I was freezing and my vision was all blurry....that's what 6 laps without water will do to ya. Thanks to the other team guys who showed so much concern for my welfare....
Cyclebration-Chagrin Falls (June 26) by Brian Ramsey
cha grin (sha`grin) n. A keen feeling of mental unease, as of annoyance caused by distress or a disconcerting event. Yeah that definition sounds about right to describe Sunday's Chagrin Falls GP race. Of course that is just my take on it as we had another team mate in the cat 4 race demonstrating that he was feeling good. Congratulations to Doug Williams for taking first place!! The race started out with a 20+ field in 90+ heat/humidity. From the get go it was very fast and I was at my limit digging deep. After about 10 laps I started to feel better and realized that there was not much of a field left. Doug was up front contributing to the steady high tempo and I was starting to clear the delirium from my head so I could think tactics. I knew he had a shot to establish a break and sure enough he got away with another rider. Ahh relief - time to sit behind the chasers and recover. After doing that for several laps there were only 3 of us left in the group behind the break away. Doug and the other guy were out of site and out of mind to the chasers at this point. Last lap rolls around and I go for it a little too late thinking I can out climb them to the line. Not enough hill for that to work apparently - I settle for 5th. Nice job to the other category racers as well - Dennis took a chase group sprint at the line in the 3/4 race and Jared placed 2nd in his race.
Race at the Chapel (July 14) by Denis Osowski
Well I did go and for those of you who missed...this a great course if you like 7 turn crits....Ted may have a different opinion this morning.....the 7 turns are packed onto only about 1/4 of the .6 mile course so it's really technical. It's well run although if they ever got 30 rider fields I don't know how well they would do. The great thing is you can really learn how to ride a tight crit course without the normal technical crit like danger... or entry fee..only 10 bucks. Since the course is essentially in a parking lot, there's only 2 turns that have curbs. The others are without obstruction so if you overshoot a turn or go wide you're not going to get hurt....you just ride throught the cones or onto the grass....it's really safe for the kind of course it is.
I encourage anyone who needs to improve their bike handling or who needs to get out on a crit to go to this race!
I had a blast even though I got 6th or 7th or something out of 10 riders....there were 3 cat 1's there plus Rudy and Bob Martin....it was a 'little' hard....they killed me but riding the turns was great fun anyway.
Garret Wonder Memorial Crit (July 16) by Denis Osowski
We had 5 ADCT guys at the race which was very cool to see. One guy isn't even on the team at the moment.
This was four corner job with a gradual uphill and downhill maybe a little less than a mile around. Very boring. I tried some stuff and got into other stuff but nothing worked early so I sat in from 1/2 way to go till near the end. With about 3 to go Jim G gunned it and got the pot stirring as it drew a counter attack which drew a counter attack. At 1-1/2 to go the last counter was just about back and I decided to go. A dangerous little maneuver out of the field successfully got me up the road but then I saw one guy coming across and made a huge, huge mistake...I waited for him. He and I had a solid 5 to 10 seconds when we came through for the bell but I started to fail from the effort and we were caught by a group of 5-10 riders between turns 3 and 4. I thought I held my position well but the finish pickers put me down for 12th.
Cyclebration-Dublin (July 16) by Denis Osowski
Jimmy and I drove from Westerville to Dublin for this race getting there early enough for some good napping time since there was about 6 hours between the two races. About 2 hours from the race start the LOUDEST thunderstorm I've heard came through. I mean the lighting was coming down like across the street and the thunder crack actually hurt a little when it hit your chest....or maybe that was the lighting...whatever. It didn't seem that the race was going to come off dry but in fact it did in the end. Unfortunately, Jimmy chose not to race as the big Junior camp starts on Wednesday and you can't race from a hospital bed so he wisely decided to sit out. I chose to register as soon as possible so I wouldn't wimp out myself.
The course was described as a "tasty" little crit about .6 miles long, four corner, 50 laps again but this time it was classic Tyler. Wide long straight-aways with turns through standing water onto streets narrower than my driveway...and lined with 2-foot high stone walls topped with stone spikes. Very tasty. Oh yeah, turn 3 had a branch that whacked riders in the face if you rode through the apex of the turn. Fortunately, Bob Grimm went into some guy's garage, got some branch pruners and started cutting before the 3/4 race started. THANK YOU BOB! Between turns 3 and 4 there was a 100m, 8% hill that just killed ya.
Jim G started with me on this one and I think almost the whole race came down to lap 1, turn 1. If you weren't in position by then....heaven help you. I noticed that once I got into the top 10, it was easy to hold position since the roads were so narrow and so much suffering was being dealt at the back of the pack. We were really slowing down for the corners even in the front....I can only imagine what the back must have been like. Again I went out on the hunt a couple of times and after what seemed countless attacks, counters, and general throwin' down a group of 9 got up the road with 20 seconds. I wasn't in it though. Another case of bad timing my recovery. I was hoping someone else would bring it back but I sensed that the field had already given up with 40 laps to go. I figured that all the cash was up the road so the only thing to do was bridge or sprint for pizza primes. Usually when I try this either the whole field comes with me or the breakaway decides to really throw down and I never make it. This time the break actually sat up at the exact time I was going across. It only took a little less than two laps to go across. The tight turns helped me too. Anyway, I made it with 38 laps to go and then sat in for 10 laps. Bob Grimm was on course calling out the time gaps which was extremely helpful (thanks, Bob) because as long as the gap was going up, I didn't work. I only worked when we were losing ground. Finally with about 20 to go the gap grew huge all of a sudden and we were on our way to lapping the field....which most of us really didn't want to do. I thought about attacking across to the field, going through it, and off the front alone but cramps were setting in and I needed to be conservative. So, with 10 to go I worked back up through the reduced field (about 25 remained of 45 or so starters) and waited for the sprint. I had to be so conservative and save for the 'hill' between 3 and 4 that I couldn't move up as well as I wanted and the finish came out pretty much in the order we came out of turn 4. I think I lost maybe one spot after turn 4 for 6th place. Some hated this course but I thought it was excellent. If only they would have stayed with the 6 turns they originally planned....that would have been extra tasty!