Look. Zip. Shoot.

I'm in Ohio for a week, so I decided to do a training race on the West side of town. I'd done the same race series in May of 2005, back when I was racing for Case... and this is using a loose interpretation of the word "racing". Actually, during the one race of the series that I managed to finish, I got 5th... of 10... and 3 of the other 5 had dropped out.

It was about 95 degrees when we rolled out (that's 35 Celcius, Jenksy), and there were about 30 starters (that's 30 in metric). The race was 20 laps of a 2 mile course, consisting entirely of pancake-flat roads - this being Cleveland, the roads were choppy, potholed, and gravelly... seriously, my right hand is still numb, 24 hours later.

So, the whole field was on Zipp wheels. Half of them were too-rich-for-their-own-good racers with bling-bling bikes, and the other half (including me!) got to use Zipp demo wheels. I'll tell you what, they accelerate like all get-out, but I am not cool with cornering on tires that I've never used before.

After a mile, I felt the need to stretch my legs, so I attacked and stayed away for a while. A few laps of surfing the front of the field went by, and I watched prime after prime go by, waiting for the right conditions to emerge.

And emerge they did! With 24 miles to go, a small group got off the front during the sprint for another minor prime (this time for a Zipp hat). I bridged up, shouted "we have a gap, work it!", and then took as hard a pull as I could. Within about 3 minutes of 20sec pulls, everyone had been dropped except myself and a guy from SnakeBite... his team had about 6 guys in the race, so I took advantage of their teamwork and enjoyed the blocking.

We swapped pulls and primes for the rest of the race... I wanted cash, and he wanted little Zipp trinkets, so it worked out well. I ran out of water with 5 laps to go, which was fun.

Not wanting to get caught, we kept digging deep. I asked the police officer marshalling a turn to clock our gap. The next time we came by, he shouted "20 or 30 seconds!" Oh, shit. Fortunately, this was actually our gap to the P/1/2/3 field, who were about to lap us. In the end, we took about 3 or so minutes out of the field.

I stopped pulling with about 600m to go, then jumped at 200m. I looked back, and seeing that I had a few lengths of room, I then zipped the jersey and faked a jump-shot... this will probably only make sense if you're a Rutgers racer.

DK demonstrates
Some notes from the race:

• It is NOT COOL to hitch a ride from the passing P/1/2/3 field and move from the 4/5 field to the 4/5 break. Thank you, random unattached d-bag, for at least owning up to it and dropping back to the field.
• The Zipp tires on the Zipp wheels were designed with unidirectional speed in mind. They might not be particularly grippy in the corners, but damned if the dimpled rubber didn't save me 0.07 Watts.
• Zipp gave the winners some nice schwag. That's all I've got to say.
• Big thanks to SpikyHairWill, whose "let's take turns leading each other out" sprint workouts prepared me for the 2-up sprint very nicely.
• Racing is not the same without teammates. I'm not talking about in-race tactics, it's the pre- and post-race comraderie that was lacking yesterday. Whether we're commisserating about frustrating anecdotes or celebrating exciting results, having teammates is a vital part of being a racer.
  

So, I won some stuff, and I got some cash, but mostly I FINALLY WON AN F'IN BIKE RACE!!!