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Carrol County Road Race
By Dave Thompson
Congrats to Dave Haussler with a well earned win yesterday in the 50+ category at Carroll Co.! 25 50+ riders lined up in the heat yesterday at Chadwick, including DICE riders, Dave Haussler, John Harrington and myself. A strong field including the top 3 from last year. A new starting town this year changed the dynamics of race, bringing the tough climbing section earlier in race. We started out at brisk tempo, catching the Cat 4 field at 16m and merging together into a pack of about 50 riders. At that point our team strategy kind of went out the window. I simply tried to identify the strong 50+ riders and keep our guys close to them. The speed went up a lot after we merged, we covered the 27m to the base of the big climb in Savannah in 1h 5m! The sprinters teams were trying to tire out the climbers, like myself. The race blew apart on the big climb like always, with about 25 riders still together at top. We lost John at that point leaving Dave and I still riding well near front. From then on it was the war of attrition, battling heat, hills and a few attacks. The turning point of race came at 52m when we went to cross RR tracks near Lanark. The RR started working on crossing that morning, not telling the race director. We faced 200yds of sand/gravel. We dismounted like in CX, ran thru hazard, then 4 50+, and 2 Cat 4 riders took off on wrong road, while the rest of us went right direction. There was mass confusion, with some riders waiting to restart and others taking advantage of confusion. Dave and I took off with him doing majority of work to chase down what we thought was lead group. 5m of chasing got him back on, I almost made it just blowing before contact. He rode in with a group of 4's, with me trailing in 90 seconds behind. To our surprise we saw the 4 50+ guys who had taken wrong road in well ahead of us. But they were relagated for cutting/wrong course giving Dave the win, with me getting 3rd. Temps were in the 90's by the time we were done.
61.75m in 2:47:45 Note the fact that when you take out the relagated riders, Dave had the fastest overall time! |
