Poolesville High School Road Race 2008 report

Poolesville High School Road Race report
Poolesville, MD
May 3rd, 2008
Cat 1/2/3

This is going to be a short one. This is my favorite road race of the year- last year I did well, given the circumstances, in the 3/4 race. So this year I decided I'd do the 1/2/3 race and see how far I could make it.

1st lap - I was sitting in the top 10-15 for the first 4 miles. Then we hit the dirt road, which was in horrible shape from all the rain. I lost both my water bottles before the end of the 1.5 mile dirt road, and was then riding mid-pack. When I got out of the gravel, I lost a few more spots due to my horrible choice of lines. On the way up the only steep hill the course offers, the thought went through my head that there was no way I could do 70 more miles with the one bottle that was in my jersey pocket.

I rode on my own for about 2 miles into a pretty good headwind. Aaaaaand then I missed a turn. The course marshall didn't have his directional flag up, and I thought he was there to note the huge pothole that a guy crashed in about 6 years ago... at the last second he put the flag up- I was supposed to go right, and instead I went right past him. At this point everyone that was behind me that I could have ridden with had made the turn, and I was then DFL. This ended any and all motivation I had left.

I rode one more lap to retrieve my lost bottles (I recovered one of the two), then hung with the Kazane team in the parking lot 'til Keck showed up with a rear flat.

75 starters, 17 finishers. Eeeek. I don't know the ratio of mechanical-to-fitness DNFs, though. I can say that had I not had the "mechanical" loss of water bottles, I would probably have fallen victim to the lack of fitness reasoning for going home early.