Bow Road Race - Cat 5 under 35 RR - Brian Campbell
NEBC Summary
8 Brian Campbell
17 Joshua Tetrault
19 Colby Ricker
23 Bernard Tan
28 James Hall
The race started out at a moderate pace up to the KOM dropping about ~15 people from the field. I was in the middle of the pack at this point about 100 yards from the leaders. Luckily the field stretched into a nice thin line of riders crossing the top all the way back to me allowing me to catch back up with the leaders easy. I think I was riding with Joshua in the lead group at this point with ~20 other riders.
At the start of lap two, ~8 riders from the field pushed it up to the top and broke the rest of the field up badly. I was one of the people who could not keep the pace and fell off the lead group (I did not see any other NEBC riders at this point). Luckily at the top I teamed up with 4 other riders (one of whom had knee high argyle socks) and we were able to fight our way back to the lead group catching them just before the final decent to the race start (we caught them mainly b/c the group sat up). I unfortunately burned a lot of precious energy in the pursuit.
At the start of lap three, 6 riders from the field pushed it up to the top. Again I was off the lead pack with about 50 yards separating us. I wanted to sprint to catch the lead group but I was so tired and felt like I was going to pass out I figured it was best not too. Instead I picked up the pace slightly to catch up to the one other rider who was with me crossing the top and sucked his wheel for about 2 minutes on the decent to recover. We then worked together to finish the final lap thinking we could possibly catch the lead group. However, as the lap continued the lead group got further and further ahead of us. We finished roughly 1:30 behind them. (He beat me on the final sprint so I ended up 8th.)
The level competition was superb in our group. One of the lead group riders was Christopher from TEAM Psycho who some of you have seen at the Thursday CRW fitness ride and he was clearly not the best.
All in all, the race was very clean and safe and I felt very comfortable in the pack. The course and road were in excellent condition and well marked and marshaled.