One mans race: Louisville 45+ crit from Adam Asnes

There's a special feeling when putting on race wheels for the first race of the year. When I put on those carbon tubulars, my bike loses about a pound and the hum and spring of the tires while warming up gets me psyched. There was a solid race turnout and evidently plenty of others were there happy to get started with the first Colorado Cup race of the year.

In the 45+ race, our team had Peter Ismert, Marcel van Garderen and myself representing the category, with Steve Birnbaum, Butch Stinton and Bill Kellegher joining us as there was no 55+ category for this event. Peter has the most race miles and conditioning, so we discussed taking advantage of that if the opportunity presented itself. The Louisville Crit course is not particularly challenging from a technical standpoint, but there is a gentle hill after the last corner, lasting for about 600 or 700 meters. That hill can start to wear on the racers' early season conditioning when it's crunch time, but this year, there was a bit of a tailwind pushing the race up the hill and somewhat lessening its effect. The race went along fairly predictably for the first 40 minutes, with a few breaks being brought back usually within a lap or two. Steve had a strong effort leading us up the hill for one lap bringing in one such break. Of note was one move from Charley Hays, Trek Bicycle Store and a Rally Sport rider that was away for several laps, but never quite out of site. Kudo's to those two for what was clearly a hard effort.

Crunch time was inevitable and the last few laps started heating up with everyone back together. Pete, Marcel and I were all near the front of the field, when I saw an attack from Rod Yoder of Natural Grocers near the top of the hill with 3 to go. I shouted to Pete to jump in it, which he promptly did. Marcel and I swarmed to the front and the break quickly got a gap. Natural Grocers, Boulder Orthopedics and Rally Sport also swarmed the front to slow things down as they were represented. It quickly looked like this was the break that would stick and much of the rest of the field was too tired to make a consistent effort to move through the blocking. With one to go, I poised myself, still near the front, expecting to sprint for leftovers. Mike Inglis, of Tokyo Joe's jumped the field early on the last lap backstretch downhill in what I (and apparently others) thought was way too far off from the finish. Then the unpredictable happened. Up in the break Peter accelerated aggressively through the last turn and skipped a pedal sending his bike into a violent lurch and slowing the entire break as they went into evasive action. Peter went from going for the win to on the side of the road with a damaged wheel. I'm told it was pretty remarkable he didn't get close and personal with the pavement. Marcel saw Peter on the side of the road, just as we cleared the last corner at the start of the uphill and took a ferocious jump out of the field. I had been sitting on Marcel's wheel thinking he knew I was there, but he jumped so hard that he cleared a quick 20 feet ahead. This actually ended up helping me as I now had a "rabbit" to accelerate toward and I started digging in to the sprint, knowing that it was going to be a long way to the line. A quick glance back and I saw a gap behind me. Mid-way up the rise, I was back to Marcel, and catching members of the break. I kept up the push but didn't realize one Natural Grocers rider, Eric Cheezum, had been sitting on my wheel the whole way. He easily jumped past me near the line for third, which was good positioning on his part. I ended up 4th, Marcel 6th. Mike Inglis, who had jumped earlier, ended up making it entirely through the break for the win, with Eric Ray, a RallySport rider who was in the break, holding on for second.