8-6-2006 by Jimmy Mac
Everyone loves the Zoar road race, I sure did this past Sunday. I was wearing the A&F colors but I was born and raised a Freewheeler so I can still write here, right? With the addition of a cat3 only field, the 1/2/3 race only had 20 entrants. It was a pretty active race for the first lap, lots of attacks and an established 3 man group with several chase attempts. The first time up the final climb I set some fast but steady tempo to keep it tame and bring back some time on the group ahead. After the descent and onto the rollers, the 3 leaders still had around 10-20 seconds and another bunch of attacks started. I hitched a ride on Tris Hopkins' wheel and rode up to join with two others and form a chase. It took a good effort to make it across but we did and the tempo was high in the new group of 7. It consisted of me, zac dieringer-lake effect, dan quinlin-mvc, chris cioccio-color me safe, tris hopkins-torelli, nate ziccardi-savage hill, and steve cummings-gpoa, and I think every one of us had at least one teammate in the field, so a chase was unlikely. After a very fast lap or two, Don (riding the follow moto) came up and told us we had 2 minutes on the field. So the laps slowed for a while, except the last hill where steve would hammer over the last 100m every lap. The last lap was really slow, nobody wanted to work (including myself) except for Nate. You can always count on Nate to keep a race moving, a huge help. There were a few attacks by dieringer and cioccio, among others, but nothing stuck. Steve attacked again on the last time up the climb but it was only at the top and no real gap could form. So a group of 5 was left on the descent. There was a crash in a field in front with around 1k to go and we had to slow for the ambulance and the 4 field was in front of us in the right lane. I jumped and got a small gap with 350 to go and no one ended up coming around me; Nate 2nd, then steve, zac, and chris
It was a great race aside from the confusion at the finish. Stark does a great job with it and we all appreciate it. Special thanks to all the volunteers, Don C for riding the moto, whoever drove the awesome prowler as a pacecar, and whoever got the free donuts for afterwards.