A long time between drinks
The re-tooled Belterra Hill Country Circuit Race was held this past Saturday west of Austin. I say re-tooled because the prior two years it featured tough pitches and fast descents through a nascent development. No longer a pretty construction site, Belterra is a full-on neighborhood replete with driveways and required a new route. This year’s edition featured a larger loop with one gradual grade and a long, flat stretch on 290 before dramatically swooping back into the neighborhood for the finish. After doing my friday time trial interval homework, I woke up early to volunteer for the morning races where my duties ranged from traffic-management device rearranging (placing cones in oncoming 290 traffic yikes) to reading magazines and finally to protecting myself from the rain with said magazine. Not too bad.
When we did get to line up and race at 1pm, I was eager to try a new race. Our team expected a bunch sprint on the mostly non-selective course coupled with the short distance. Our sprinter for the occasion was to be determined in real time and I was planning on giving Steven a clean pair of wheels from which to sprint for the bunch sprint win. The race was aggressive and hard. I felt the week’s training but was very excited to give the leadout role a shot again. With a bit less than one third of the race remaining, SE’s own Stefan went off the front with a huge gap and two riders in tow. I knew immediately it was the day’s move but not only did other teams miss it but it was really just an issue of getting the move back steadily and it would be negated. A full lap or more later after some hard pulls from myself and a few others we were about to catch the leaders before the hill. Generally this causes total detonation to the field and the next move rolls. It didn’t really materialize and with a lap to go it was all together.
Bunch sprint plan in full force. Wheeler was told to follow my wheel at all costs and Wenger was to shut down EVERY single move until the finish. Tough love I know. Wenger was perfect but Wheeler was stalled by a mechanical and I knew I had to free-lance the sprint despite selling out earlier to bring back the Rothe-powered break. But no big deal, the all downhill lead-in to the finish meant clever riding would leave me fresh enough to contest. I found myself conveniently in third wheel in the green-camo armada that is THSJ-Tx Tough when we reached the final kick to the finish. Anticipating a swarm I hit out early and was quickly about to be overtaken by fellow SE superstar Tyler Jewell (I think) on the inside when the curb gracefully arced back into my bee-line towards the finish. The unprotected windy side of the road proved too challenging for Alex Boyd and I managed my first ever bunch sprint win. Having not won a race yet this spring I was thrilled. Winning our team race was an added bonus and in front of my fiancee and her parents the sweet icing. After tasting the fruits of a sub-90 minute race it is with some reticence I will continue into the hilly road race portion of the TX calender these next two weeks.