The week started out nicely with a Tuesday night Augusta race at the Sussex County Fairgrounds. It was a rainy, windy, and nasty day. Due to work conflicts, Joe was the only RER racer able to toe the line along with about 15 other racers. Joe knew that noone would be in the mood to chase down a long breakaway so he made a surge about 3/4 of the way through the first 1.1 mile lap, and opened up a gap that noone was able to close down. Joe stayed away for the whole hour of racing for another solid victory! Joe is quickly putting together a very very strong resume.
The next race on the agenda for this week was the Tour de Lake Hopatcong. Joe and I heard about this event through our brother in law, who is a police officer in Mt. Arlington, New Jersey. This event raises money for his police department, so we definitely had to do the race. At this race, Joe, Paul, and I would all be competing. The Tour de Lake is not a USAC sponsored event, so we didn't race in categories. The distance we raced was 40 miles that goes around Lake Hopatcong. We had heard that the course was pretty hilly, and figured it would suit our abilities well. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect from the competition, and was pleasantly surprised when a large lead group of about 40 guys stuck together over the first couple climbs. The whole race, we were being told that there was one hill in Sparta called Edison Road that breaks the pack apart every year. Joe, and I knew this would be our opportunity to test the legs of some of the top riders in the pack.
Once we hit the hill, we accelerated and immediately broke apart the group. After about 400 meters of climbing about 10-12% incline, we were alone up front. Once the grade leveled off to about 5%, Joe took over and laid down a massive pull to really gap the field. After about 1 mile of climbing and some really hard pulls, we saw that a group of 3 climbers were clawing their way back to us. I had nothing in my legs to handle another epic surge from Joe's Vino-like pulls so we sat up and waited for them to come back to us. Once they latched on, I saw that there were two riders from the Cycle-Craft team(including one pro mountain biker and Cat-3 road racer that has won this race 3 years in a row), and one Marty's Cycle rider in the group. Once it all came back together they refused to take significant pulls up the rest of the climb and it allowed a larger group of guys to claw their way back to us once we hit the descent. After we all regrouped, I was excited to see that Paul was making his way back on!
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| Paul leading a chase group |
For the next 8-10 miles the group crawled along allowing more and more riders to latch back on. We knew there was one more significant climb left about 10 miles left to go and figured this would be our last shot to get a decent gap before the finishing climb. The mile long climb started on a real steep grade of about 10%. Once we hit that grade Joe and I switched off taking hard pulls that shelled the entire field off our wheels. We knew that there were a lot of strong riders behind us that would organize and chase hard once we hit the descent, so we hammered until we reached the top. We had a gap of about 30 seconds and that gap pretty much held until the finish line. The wind and the hills were relentless the final 10 miles. The last 3 miles or so my back cramped up really badly and I was real lucky Joe was still taking his Vino-like pulls to keep the gap. We rolled into the finish together and I took the win. Paul ended up coming in 12th place about 8 minutes back. It was the longest race of his short career and he bonked pretty hard the last 10 miles. Still a great result to see him in the lead pack until the last major climb!
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| Joe(left) and I in our 10 mile long break |
Overall, the Tour de Lake was a great event. It was really well organized and had a very large group of riders, both racing and just riding the course. It was a lot of fun, and Real Estate Rescue will be sure to show up to this event every year!
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