Race Report: Giro di Coppi, Cat 3/4

On terrain as undulating as we've got for the Giro di Coppi, the chance your body will hold up to allow you to place well once is slim enough. Try to double the feat. Well, I was trying. It's hard to make realistic goals for a race you've won before. Let's start there.

This year, the race followed the similarly dumb theme of combining Cat 3/4 because the masters apparently *need* their own field and BAR category. (Why the hell do we have age groups for 35 year-old racers when most of them are already the best locally. This is cycling, race your damn category.)

I digress.

Coppi is always scorching, but I'm cool with that. I drink a lot and dump water on my head to stay cool. Coppi's also undulating up-and-down, which suits my legs and small size well. Having posted a "1" as a result in the Cat 4 field last year (though it never showed up on USA Cycling's results, good job Squadra Coppi), my goals this year were relatively modest. I had a top ten in mind.

Okay, I promise to stop throwing in bitter caveats.

During my 20-minute warm-up, I dried an entire bottle. I got excellent starting position next to Mike M. from nature Valley, who I had stolen the Fausto bobble-head from last year. Teammates lined up somewhere in the field with me were my best boy D-Wis, James L., Andrew S., up-and-coming Matts R. and D., Dennis, and a few other folks including two racers fresh from junior nationals, Avery and David.

The mixed field was antsy, and immediately three guys popped off the front. As Andrew and I were watching the gap grow from a dozen riders back in the field, D-Wis tried to bridge. Watching the gap grow with Drew stuck in no-man's land was like watching a man do splits over two chairs. Eventually he'd slip through the crack, and he did - in our direction.

The break did not have any racers from the heavy hitting teams. DC MTB and Kenda were present (with one other guy) but none of the larger squads. It took the entire lap, but the break came back with a well-organized, cooperative chase. The organization also made evident who the stronger teams were, by far: Coppi and DVR/Bike Rack. Those teams didn't just have numbers, but firepower.

To give you an idea of how strong the chase was when the break was out of site, I remember seeing my heart rate in the mid-180s on Old Georgetown Road, the unmarked stretch that gets gradually steeper and hotter into the sun. It took me until after that to feel truly warmed up.

I finished a bottle during the first lap to ditch one and make space for a feed. We had two NCVC girlfriends out in the sun with three coolers worth of bottles. (Thank you Lauren and Laura!)

To be quite honest, I don't remember anything significant happening on the second lap. The hairy-legged dude in the Snapple kit pulled the field around the entire lap. Apparently another racer asked him what he was doing and he claimed he was just "trying to get a work out."

That was fine with the rest of us. Good pull.

I spent just about the entire lap sipping more water, having a snack, and hovering within a safe distance of the guys in the wind. I had a few guys I wanted to keep an eye on, and they were on. Avery and Drew had been up front early on, but both started fading back because of the pace on the hills.

Andrew and Dennis emerged up telling me it took 'em the entire time to be able to move up. Crowded roads, I guess, but I found it easy to move around near the front of the group after cresting every hill, turning every corner, or before/after the feed zone. Matt and Matt found their way up the pack later on - which was important on the third lap.

The third lap was quick. Matt D. and Andrew both stuck their noses in the wind a good bit to keep our colors in each move. Just about every hill saw one guy giving a dig, and about a dozen guys chasing. Tom B. from Coppi and I chatted a bit and agreed, the stretch on Old Georgetown Road could snap the rubber-band of the peloton.

I didn't get as far up as I would have liked on that stretch, but I managed to made the second split after the left-hand turn. Coppi had a pair of guys up front in a 6-man group. I was chasing with two others, but eventually had to jump on my own to catch the lead group. One minute later, the lead group was a dozen-strong, including about four of five Coppi riders; I was the only NCVC racer there, so I only briefly hit the wind in such a big group.

There were some recognizable names left out of this third-lap party, though. By the time we turned onto Barnesville Road, the peloton - or the 30-some racers left in it - were gruppo compacto.

On this stretch, two crazy things happened:

(a) I saw one of my teammates that started the race with us driving his car in the opposite direction, bike on the roof rack. He was already on his way home. F*@#.

(b) Tony A. from DVR/Bike Rack hung himself out to dry, quite literally, for the entire stretch of Barnesville Road. The haus took a massive dig in an attempt to get away, but nobody joined him.

This included me. I was doubting my own legs' abilities and was racing in a boring, conservative manner. (You probably noticed an NCVC rider with a bunch of pink Kinesio tape on the back of my right calf. Yep, that was for my ankle/achilles, and Catherine's choice of color.)

Tony's bold attempt didn't last past the finish line, and the calm-before-the-storm ensued for the final 12 miles. My young and bantam teammate David, who'd been hovering near the front the entire race, rode up next to me and said two words: Deja vu.

He was right. David was referring to our Cat 4 race last year, where the hard efforts still couldn't narrow the pack down to fewer than half of the competitors. Racers were hot, tired, and too evenly matched.

The final jolt up Old Georgetown Road was hardly a scene from a race. A Haymarket rider took off, and the rest of us chatted about it.

David turned to me and commented that this was deja vu. We were, like 2009, too far back in the pack. I couldn't disagree, so we had to weave our own routes to move up in the pack. I was patient, however. Last year I was nowhere near the wind, but timed my sprint well.

Perhaps this year I was being too comfortable with my position behind the sweet spot, but hugging the center-line. Last I saw, David was a rider or two farther up on the right gutter. I'd told him to find my wheel if possible but his pack-surfing skills put mine to shame. I couldn't find any other teammates directly around me, and the pack was as congested as the beltway during rush hour. Nobody was moving very far on Barnesville road.

The Haymarket rider frightened folks by toughing it out against the wind a bit longer than any of us expected. That's for damn sure. Past the feed zone into the final downhill, things finally sped up and got sketchy, once again like last year. No real problems, though, this entire 50-miler played out as safe as I can remember for any of my races.

My positioning did not improve until the foot of the final hill. A slew of riders jolted into the left lane well before the 200 meter sign, so I followed. Heck yeah, open road.

CRAP nope, it wasn't open. One of the big Coppi riders decided to transform himself into a tree trunk on the final hill. The dude came to an absolute standstill as I was accelerating, and I had to swerve hard left up the hill, which killed the mojo of my achilles and ankel, so I had to sit back down in the saddle.

Still, I passed probably a dozen riders congested, cramped, and cooking in the right lane. I found myself in third wheel with about 50 meters to go. Could it be? Can I pull this off again?

Not with these legs, not today.

To my left, a WWVC rider led a DVR/Bike Rack rider off my wheel. They'd timed it perfectly. I couldn't quite catch the riders in the right lane, either. I had started my sprint from about one or two riders too far back and it was too much real estate to cover.

If my ankle hadn't taken enough of a beating, I really was desperately dumb by the end of the race. I was not, however, about to secede fifth place to the peloton's super-domestique from Tri-Team Snapple. The guy has a diesel engine, but I burnt the fumes to hold position ahead of him.

I finished 5th, which I am contend with. Snapple took sixth, and my friend and former teammate Greg G., racing for William & Mary now, placed 7th. A pair of WWVC racers ended up taking the win and another spot in front of me. DVR/Bike Rack took second place from my own wheel. I have no clue who finished third.

Aside from being the victim of three water-bottle thefts, I can't complain too much. Giro di Coppi is on some beautiful, fun roads. Interpret this whichever way you want, but it's always a hot contest, too. I like this race a lot.