The Hugo Report

Saturday was my first big road race of the year - The Hugo Road Race. As far as courses go, it's not the most exciting, but it's one of the few long road races of the season (62 miles). Hugo is located about an hour and a half east of Denver, which means the race is hot, windy, and relatively flat.

Last year I didn't even pre-register for the race, so I figured I would be fine to register the week before the race this time. Apparently there are more cat 4 racers in Colorado now, and the field was full by Tuesday afternoon. I was bummed because I was going to have to race in the "overflow" group instead of with the main field. But it turned out to be pretty fun, because I find it much more enjoyable to ride in a pack of 30 than a pack of 100.

As expected for a road race, the pace was pleasantly slow for a while. The course is flat to downhill for the first 20 miles, so it seemed like people we waiting until we got to the rolling hills before making their move. Well, just as we about to get to those first hills, we had to stop on the road. There was a really bad crash in a group that was in front of us and there were emergency vehicles blocking the road. It was really strange to stop in the middle of a race and get off the bike, but it really worked to my advantage. As we were standing there, I noticed that my front tire was a little squishy. I had just enough time to replace my tube and get the tire back on the bike before we were riding again. What luck!

I tried to make a move on one of the hills just to mix things up a bit and see if a few of us could create a gap. That didn't work out so well. What would happen is that the group would get strung out but nobody was willing to get to the front and help keep the speed up. There was a feed zone at about the halfway point of the race and someone put in a good attack. It's not against the rules to attack in a feed zone or anything, but I consider it pretty bad form. People are busy reaching for a new bottle, so it's difficult to respond to the attack. I decided it wasn't really worth chasing, so I sat in the draft as other people took up the lead. Another person countered to bridge up to the first attacker. The first person eventually petered out, and the second went on ahead of him. It was very frustrating because this group was terrible at riding an efficient paceline, so I just kept watching the race leader get further and further away until he was out of sight. Of course, it didn't help our cause any that he was getting a sweet draft from the lead vehicle while the rest of us were riding into a headwind.

There were several small attacks throughout the rest of the race, but they were all pretty easily covered. As we neared the end of the race, my leg muscles started cramping up. I really need to figure out what's causing that, but it makes it extremely difficult to pedal. I couldn't really contest for the sprint because I couldn't get out of the saddle, but I did manage to pass a couple people who popped on the way to the line. I ended up in 6th place, which is a pretty good finish for me, and I had a lot of fun.