#11 Texas A&M Tunis-Roubaix: Race Report

Hello everyone,

This is a report of the first collegiate cycling race I’ve participated in. Last January, I decided to join the Texas Cycling Team in order to find something to motivate myself as I finish my college career. I’ve also got a 60-page thesis to write so I’ve decided to devote some time every day to writing in this blog in order to work on my prolific-ness with respect to writing.

I’m still healing from a series of injuries that I’ve sustained since the beginning of last year, first beginning with a hand injury that ended my musical career in January 2009, and then an ankle injury in February followed by a double-knee injury in June. By then I felt like I couldn’t do anything productive in life and was ready to call it quits, but I decided not to give up. I went through several months of physical therapy and now I’m back on the bike, ready to compete. Due to a three-year absence away from sports, since I was devoted to a musical career, I probably had less mileage than the rest of my teammates, so I was apprehensive about the upcoming race at Tunis. Nevertheless, I decided that I would have to take risks to accomplish anything worthwhile in life, so I decided to register for the race even though I didn’t feel completely ready. I felt concerned that I wouldn’t be able to endure the race even though it was only 33 miles long, plus a criterium the following day, as I’ve had training rides in excess of 70 miles beforehand. The problem was that ever since my injury, I had never worked out for more than two days in a row in order to make sure I took frequent rest days. This race however, would require me to have a workout four days in succession – a warm up day, two race days, and a recovery day.

We arrived at the CPE parking lot the morning of the race. As we waited for the rest of the team, we saw the Texas 4000 team preparing for a training ride. These are the folk that go on a charity ride from Austin to Alaska in order to raise money for cancer research.

When the rest of the team arrived, we loaded up the trailer with our bikes. Most of the team purchased state-of-the art Gary Fisher Cronus bicycles, which we acquired through a deal from one of our sponsors, Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop. However, several members decided to use their old bikes for the course since it would be on dirt roads, and they didn’t want to ruin their new frames in the event of a crash. Since I didn’t buy a Gary Fisher, I just opted for a steel Fuji Marseille equipped with puncture resistant Gatorskin Tires.

After loading up the bikes, I decided to ride with Ken and Jacob and we headed out to College Station for a 2-hour drive. When we arrived, I met my parents as we prepared for the race. My dad took the courtesy to take some photographs of the race, which can be found here.

When they called up my group, Men’s D, me, Marc, Robbie, and a guy named Steve lined up. It was the first race for all of us, and we were all excited and nervous. There was a problem with one of the race vehicles so our start time was delayed for about thirty minutes, but shortly afterward the race set off. After the neutralized zone, the pace picked up quickly and we immediately hit a difficult section, colloquially known as the “rock garden.” This was pretty much two sections of 10m long gravel pits with rocks the size of your fist. The first section came up so suddenly that I didn’t have time to decide what path to take as there were several riders in front and at both sides of me. Thus, I hit the rock garden at the worst possible spot, the middle, and my bike fishtailed so violently that I was almost thrown off my bike. Luckily, I regained control and headed towards a sandy path that continued for about a mile.

The sand was treacherous. Everyone was swerving to the left and right, and I saw a guy from UNT fall when he took a left turn too sharply. When I went through the same left turn, my bike slowed down so much that I thought my bike would stop and I would fall. However, I powered my way through, but by the time I got to the packed dirt section I realized that I had gone off the back of the pack. I frantically picked up the pace and luckily I saw Robbie up ahead, and I sat on his wheel and let him tow me for a few hundred meters. Then, I saw an A&M guy furiously chasing back, so I got on his wheel and after riding three miles at full-blast, we finally caught back on to the main pack, which contained most of the A&M riders.

As I eased up to catch my breath, Robbie caught back on, and along with a few other riders, attacked the bunch as they tried to bridge to the leading trio. I decided to let Robbie go so I could rest while the group I was in did the work to catch his group. Then Marc attacked, and I ended up in a paceline with about four other A&M riders, a guy from TCU, another from UH, and another guy from an unknown school. As the other riders in my group did the work to catch up to Marc and Robbie, I had the luxury of doing no pacework as I had teammates in the front. However, it looked like Marc was getting tired so we decided to catch him after the twelfth mile. I was hoping that he would stay with us, but once we hit the rock pit for the second time, we lost him as he went off the back.

One lap down, two to go…The second lap was probably the easiest of the three, and we spent most of it at a moderate pace as we spent much of our energy navigating the rocks and dirt roads. However, the difficulty of the course took its toll on the people in my group, and we were soon reduced to four riders – me, two A&M riders, and the unknown. The unknown rider attacked us after the 18th mile, and we let him go because we had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to keep up his pace for long. He was only able to get about 200 meters ahead of us, and we maintained that gap until he got tired and we caught him at about the 25th mile. He hung on for a little longer but we dropped him after he got tired.

On the third lap, it was just the three of us: me and the two A&M guys. After the sand trap, we lost one of the A&M guys, and the two of us found ourselves in no-man’s land. Fortunately, we bridged back up to Robbie’s group and we found ourselves some allies for the rest of the course. The final group contained me and Robbie, the A&M guy, a Baylor guy, an SMU guy, and quite possibly a few other riders that escaped my attention. Since we only had about 3 miles to go at this point, it became clear to us that we probably wouldn’t catch the leading trio, as it was possible that they may have already finished. Thus, it became a race for fourth, and we got ourselves into a cat-and-mouse situation where we were waiting for someone to make a move. Robbie and I had the advantage because we were teammates. Thus, when we hit the final climb of the race at 1km to go, Robbie told me to get ready. When it was his turn to lead the paceline, he accelerated, and I followed on his wheel. Then, when he let up, he told me to go as fast as I could. Thus, I charged out of our group and opened up a gap, with the rest of the riders furiously chasing. I went into the red-zone as it was the hardest uphill effort that I had ever put in. However, as I approached the line, the TCU guy nipped me in the sprint, and I had to settle for fifth, with Robbie getting 6th.

The TCU guy eventually came around…Credit goes to Kevin Tokarski @ cyclepics.net

After the finish, we got off our bikes to get water and stretch our sore legs, and sat down to wait for Marc. After a few minutes, Marc arrived and we celebrated the completion of our first road race. Overall, I felt satisfied with my performance in my first race, though it would have been better had we not let the leading trio get away.

After the race: me, Marc, and Robbie.