I raced the Tour de Gap event this past weekend which was
a fun but hard 'T-shirt' ride sponsored by Abilene's
Biketown shop . Unsanctioned events such as Tour de Gap are sometimes derisively
referred to as T-shirt rides by egotistical USA Cycling racers because the
organizers hand out T-shirts to all participants and because this type of
race/tour is typically not sanctioned by USA Cycling.
Sanctioned or not, the field that lined up for the 56 mile race
distance included quite a bit of cycling talent and saw some hard racing at
every age group level. The overall winner was Abilene's
Luke Allen, a strong young cyclist who races for the Matrix/RBM team and also
for Midwestern University
at the collegiate level.
Allen completed the tough hilly 56 mile loop in 2 hrs 20 min
(a 24 mph average) narrowly edging out Chaparral Cycling Club's Kelly Brown who
finished with the same time and Midwestern's Cameron Lowery who took 3rd place
in a time of 2 hrs 23 min.
The race started in finished in the small town of Buffalo
Gap, which sits a few miles south of Abilene.
Riders followed an undulating course over mainly small farm-to market roads
that included almost 1,400 feet of climbing along the way. Riders rolled out of Buffalo
gap on a narrow town street, turned onto a small farm road and the race was on
with the faster cyclists ramping up the pace from the gun. Shortly after the start I managed to latch
onto the 2nd group on the road which consisted of about 15 riders of mixed ages.
This group rolled along averaging 20-22 mph for the first
30-35 miles with most people working well together and taking pulls as each
rider rotated to the front. The differences in ability and experience,
however, were evident as some ramped up the pace when on the front (almost attacking the
group) while others slowed down noticeably as they pulled and slowed the group's pace
down.
By the time we reached the day's biggest climb
at about the 33 mile mark, I mistakenly thought I had identified the other 60+
riders in the group and decided to mark them rather than race against everyone in
the group since the combination of hot weather and being near my threshold heart rate for almost 2 hours was starting to take a toll on my legs.
As we started up the six miles of the day's longest climb, I
noticed that who I thought were the other 60+ racers were starting to struggle
with the uphill pace just like me, so I decided to back off, let my HR come
down a bit and hope that they would blow up. That plan worked as they faded and
I reeled them back in further up the climb. I immediately put in a hard effort
for several minutes, moved ahead of them by 30-45 sec and then settled into a steady tempo pace planning
to conserve energy and maintain the gap to the finish.
The best-laid plans don't always work out, however as I
found out when I crossed the finish line and learned that another 60+ rider,
Bill Minter of Abilene, had crossed the line a few minutes ahead of me. My hard
effort to finish in 2 hrs 54 min placed me 27th overall out of 72 in the 56
mile event, 2nd in the 60+ age group and - most importantly - reminded me that
'it's hard to judge a rider's age while looking at their butt in a
pace line'.
There was one consolation, however. I raced the event on my Specialized Crux
cyclocross bike (with fat 700 x 28 road tires mounted) and since I did not see
any other cyclocross bikes in the field, I awarded myself 1st place in the 'CX
Bike in a Road Race' category :) Full results are posted at http://www.cadencesports.com/eResults.php?raceid=976&event=56%20Mile%20Results.
