Here’s my story from my 2003 season opener.  On the weekend of Feb. 21 and 22, I traveled back to my hometown of Yuma, Arizona with fellow Team X Cycling teammate Lance Sulzen and good buddy Kelly Whittenberg.  The format for the weekend’s racing was street sprints on Friday, a 66 mile road race on Saturday, and the classic downtown criterium on Sunday, all combined for the weekend as a points based stage race.

Stage 1 – Street Sprints

Friday night’s street sprints didn’t come out so well for homeboy Lance and I.  Thinking that he didn’t have a second chance to try and advance in the brackets, Lance packed up his things and missed his second heat.  After choosing to large a gear and barely qualifying for the semi-finals in my first heat, I overcompensated and went with too low a gear and I was eliminated for the evening after popping a monster wheelie off the line.  The good news was that by just participating, Lance and I had earned 10 points towards the overall General Classification on the weekend.  Plus, I think we are now a little bit wiser in the complex art of street sprinting.

Stage 2 – Welton Road Race

Better things were in store for Team X Cycling’s pale Midwestern riders on Saturday.  The road race got off to a fairly mellow start as people assessed who the big players might be.  The ProCon and Construction Zone teams out of Phoenix were represented well, as was the Viejas team out of San Diego.  Since the Arizona season has been underway for about 5 weeks I had been able to scan results prior to our trip and my money was on Construction Zone.  Also, I got a little bit of the scoop on the ProCon squad from one of their own riders who happened to be a fellow Yuma native and teammate of mine nearly 12 years ago.  He told me that ProCon had some strong sprinters and that they intended to keep it together for a sprint finish, wonderful news for Mr. Sulzen and I.

 There was a fair amount of activity over our two lap 66 mile race.  For simplicity and for the benefit of those of you that are trying to read this over your time sensitive “Corporate America” lunch hour I’ll attempt to summarize much of the race in one sentence. Start, attacks, attacks, attacks, break, regroup, feed zone, attacks, attacks, break, regroup (powered by homeboy Lance), attacks, attacks, studly solo break by LA based Zombie’s rider, feed zone, well orchestrated team chase by ProCon, and regroup which takes us up to four miles to go. 

 At four miles out the pack seemed to just slam on the brakes.  We were strolling along around 20 mph and packed from the shoulder to the yellow line.  The bigger teams were definitely eyeing each other with Construction Zone starting to drift towards the back.  Lance and I chatted and figured that Construction Zone was the team to watch and I starting making designs on how I could worm my way into their lead-out train.  ProCon and Viejas were scattered throughout the group and tensions started to mount as we all felt trapped with the finish less than four miles out.  Lance was up in the front line and I was in the second line banging handlebars and holding pinkies with the riders on either side of me.  With about two miles to the finish and one rolling hill splitting that distance at one mile from the finish, ProCon finally convinced one of their riders to slightly accelerate which was just enough to get me to the front and tucked in behind my main man Lance.  The ProCon rider up front shut down his effort although his team and several other riders continued screaming that they needed to get free.  As we started up the last rolling hill, the ProCon rider briefly accelerated and did a little better job of stringing things out, however he again pulled off rather than just maintaining tempo, which I believe would have given his team the ability to escape the confines of the tight pack and get organized.  I was tucked in on Lance’s wheel and told him to just set a moderate tempo up the hill, hoping that that would get some riders out and about and get things moving.  My plan was to just hop on the first train that rolled by and find a gap before the train tightened up and lit their engines. 

 Lance did a great job of setting a solid tempo over the top of the hill and with a little over 1 kilometer to go, all slightly downhill, riders started attacking solo, no lead-out trains to be seen anywhere.  On top of this flurry of activity we had several cars in our path bunched up behind riders from another category, so at this point chaos soon became the order of the day.  I started leap frogging from wheel to wheel as each attacking rider burned out and another surged around.  About 800 meters out we had swing wide left around the vehicles and once clear of the vehicles at about 600 meters I managed to catch a strong ProCon rider’s wheel.  He had his head down and was completely burying his needle.  At 400 meters out the ProCon rider started to fade so I punched it and at nearly that same moment off to my left I heard the sickening sounds of brakes and wheels indicating that bikes and bodies were headed for the pavement.  From then on I just focused on my sprint and I managed to get good jump on everyone, but faded just short of the line and was overtaken by 3 riders to finish fourth, and Lance, even after his previous tempo setting effort over the climb managed to finish strong for 7^th, impressive for his first race as a Cat. 3.  Shortly after crossing the line we realized that it was a pretty serious pile-up that involved about 12 riders.  Apparently the Construction Zone lead-out train was derailed and instead of sending a rider to the podium they sent at least one to the emergency room with a broken collarbone and a separated shoulder.  As a side note, this is the third time in 12 months that this particular Construction Zone rider has broken his C-bone.  The crash was even news worthy enough to make the Yuma paper the next day.  

Stage 3 -  Downtown Criterium

This is “THE” race of the weekend.  Back in 1989 this is the first bicycle race that I saw and the one that solidly hooked me in to cycling.  Throughout my racing days in Arizona I’d raced in pretty much every category from citizens at age 16 on up through the USCF and Collegiate ranks, so my ties with this particular race run pretty deep.  It wasn’t quite as big this year as years past because it lost it’s traditional March date as a warm-up race before Redlands, and it didn’t help that in 2002 it was canceled due to construction on the course.  Also, as a result of the previous year’s construction on a new Yuma City Hall, the course had to be changed from it’s traditional 0.7 mile figure 8 course to a shorter,faster L-shaped course.  This new course layout concerned me because it was quite a bit trickier than the course I’ve known for 15 years.  The finish comes shortly after the last corner, and the last corner is preceded by a fast descent through chicanes IN A PARKING LOT! 

If you were to take a lap on the course this is what you would find:  You leave the start line and after about 200 yards you take a left which climbs a hill for two blocks.  At the top of the hill you take a left and attempt to catch your breath before taking another left into the descent.  The first part of the descent is steep and jams you into a right corner, similar to the first drop on an amusement park roller coaster.  After the quick right (the one and only right on the L-shaped course), the descent continues for a block but is not nearly as steep as the preceding section, however you still carry quite a bit of speed as you head into the fast left turn into the dreaded parking lot.  The left into the parking lot is taken on smooth concrete and the angle is more than 90 degrees making it all the more critical that you get a good line heading in and have full faith in the contact patch of your tires.  Once in the parking lot you need to keep your head up and eyes open through the chicanes so that you don’t ram yourself into a curb and flail yourself on the lovely Southwestern landscaping consisting of gravel and cactus.  Once through the chicanes there is the fast final left turn back onto the short finishing straight away.  Pretty much everyone that we chatted with regarding the course had concerns about the parking lot section.

 Heading into the race, Lance and I figured that we would just sit in and see how things went.  We weren’t sure what to expect from our fitness level especially with the hill and the fact that the Arizona and SoCal riders had five weeks of racing in their legs.  Right from the gun riders attacked every lap on the hill.  About halfway through the race the prime bell started ringing with primes as much as $100 enticing riders to blow their engines and sacrifice their finish in the race.  After only a few laps on the course and watching riders battle for the primes, I knew that the race would be won by one of the top three riders at the top of the climb.   With three laps to go I still felt really strong and knew that I had enough kick to get up to the front on the last lap.  With two laps to go a few riders really put the hammer down in a last ditch attempt to escape the pack, but they were all pulled back.  At the start of the final lap I moved up to the top five and once at the base of the climb the mad dash to the top started.  By the top of the climb and heading into the corner I was in second position.  As we came out of the corner a Viejas rider jump and I grabbed his wheel as we hit the steep descent into the right hand turn.  Along  the next straight away we were battling for the front spot and ended up heading into the dreaded parking lot corner side by side bumping bars.  Somewhere along the chicanes I managed to shake him and punched it for all I was worth through the final corner.  As I sped up to the line I knew that I had the victory by a few bike lengths and felt overjoyed to have gotten the victory in front of the hometown crowd.  Homeboy Lance managed to roll across in 8^th after being temporarily impeded by a last corner crash that took the riders in 4^th and 5^th position to the pavement, a pretty impressive result for a guy that hasn’t even raced a full year yet and just completed his first weekend if racing as a Category 3.

Once the results were finalized I had nailed down 1st on GC and Lance got 7^th.  Not a bad weekend for the pale riders of Team X.  Before I sign off I need to mention the awesome support that we got from our KC based traveling buddy Kelly Whittenberg.  He was a huge help in helping us prepare for the races and taking care of last minute details like getting wheels in the pit, taking warm-up clothes, etc.  He was also extremely helpful acting as our “front man” in fending off the onslaught of questions from the elderly snowbirds that overrun the Southwest every winter.  In this regard he helped us maintain our sanity and focus on the race.  Thanks Kelly.

 That’ll do it. 

Steve Rouff – Team X Cyclist, Velotek Athlete and powered by Accelerade.