Our Mission Statement
To support, enhance, and promote the performance, fitness and safety of men and women Masters level cyclists in Florida as they share their camaraderie in the sport they love.
USAC #12778
Contact Us
Dan O' Hara, President
Steve Agronick, Vice President
Bill Bellew, Treasurer
Rose Marie Ray, Secretary
Michael Ploch, Webmaster
Sponsors
.gif)
.gif)
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
FSC Race #7 Recap
After being absent from the calendar for many years, the Florida State Championships returned to Lakeland's Loyce Harp Park for race #7 of the 2011 series. The trail system at Loyce Harp takes advantage of a large phosphate mining pit area and surrounding hardwood forest. Over the years, the abandoned pit has evolved into a lake that attracts bass fishermen from all over the southeast, due to the fertility of the water and the large bass that live there. Unique is the finger like topography and high rising wooded banks of the lake's shore. This was created during the mining process and gives the area a very different look to any other Florida riding area. The steepness and severe rises and falls of the mining waste makes for exceptionally challenging terrain-perhaps the toughest mountain bike terrain in the southeast. Lakeland's Ridge Riders mountain bike club has done a masterful job of creating and maintaining an excellent trail system, and Gone Riding's Dave Berger took advantage by laying out a course that incorporated some of the toughest sections.
Race day started out pleasantly warm, sunny and breezy. The White wave was to start first, with the second wave of riders starting off at 11:30. As usual, my masters group was to be 5th off the line in the white wave, 2 minutes behind the Clydesdale (180 lbs.+) class. As opposed to many courses where there is an open area that funnels quickly into tight singletrack, this course gave the racers over a half mile to sort themselves out before getting into the tight stuff. Due to this, I decided not to try to sprint away at the start and instead settled into third as we made our way out of the starting area. As we approached the first climb, I passed the rider ahead so as not to lose touch with Dave Taylor, my main competitor. I had to work hard to stay with Dave, as he was setting a very fast pace. We soon separated ourselves from the rest of the pack, and made our way toward one of the more technical sections of the 7.4 mile course. After we cleared the first tough section we hit some fast twisty singletrack. Mid way through a fast corner, Dave lost the front wheel and went down. I was able to avoid crashing into him, and stayed with Dave for a bit to make sure he and his bike were OK. Luckily, he had low sided, and was able to get up and proceed without any harm. I decided that my plan to follow him for the first lap no longer made sense, so I set off in the lead with him close behind.
Dave is a very good technical rider and I knew he would be able to stay with me on the sketchy descents of the tough trail sections ahead. Also, prior to his crash I had noticed that he was saving himself a bit on the flat fast sections to have reserve power for the technical climbs, so it made sense for me to hit the fast sections hard and get a good gap. I was able to do this and soon was riding solo. After 5 miles or so, I started catching slower riders from the groups starting ahead of me and carefully made my way through them. With the tight, sometimes dangerous sections of the course interspersed throughout the lap, it was important to time my passes so as not to get caught up with a racer on a steep up or downhill section, even if it meant staying well behind a rider for a fair amount of time. This led to a bit of yo-yoing, and allowed Dave to stay in touch with me. Interestingly, the unique finger like terrain meant that some of the trail sections would go out onto a finger and then turn tightly and return with only a few feet in between. This meant that I could easilly keep track of Dave, as I would pass him occasionally as I headed out of a finger and he headed in. After the tough finger sections, the course moved into more fast flowey singletrack and then sent us back into the park, where a one mile road/grass section completed the lap. Coming out of the woods I realized that the the morning's pleasant breeze had turned into a 20 mph head wind (ouch). I did my best to time trial my way back to the start finish line and get on with my second and final lap.
The second lap saw me increase my lead as I worked my way through the field, and was incident free until the final road section, where I had to pull over to allow several rescue squad trucks to head past me. I found out later that a junior racer had broken his wrist in a crash, which was a shame. There were other crashes evidently, but no one else was seriously hurt.
In the Pro field, Drew Edsall rode away from Victor Alber and Martin Cox to win by a comfortable 2 1/2 minute margin. Top female rider was Jennifer Moos. Head over to www.goneriding.com for more race results and photos. Better yet, come out to an upcoming race. It's a great challenge, and the racers and fans are as warm and friendly as you will find anywhere in the sport of cycling.
Ted
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
FM Worldwide
1 comments:
Good job writing Ted. Keep it up.
Post a Comment