Springbank - First race of the year in Ontario

This was supposed to be a rainy day, but luckily it held off for the afternoon. I was mainly using this race to build fitness and to figure out things I need to work on. Having crashed here twice (no real injuries) I was a little hesitant coming here. Judging by the small field size, I wasn't the only one. Ryan Roth came back from his touring with Silber to do this race, and Jeff Schiller came with 5 teammates, so they were both going to be big factors in the race. I can't figure out why they call it a road race, but then run it like a criterium. One day maybe I will open a fortune cookie that will provide me this answer.

Pictures provided by my wonderful sister Kayla

Made sure to get a good warm up before the start

Things were moving fast!

The race started off quick. It took my legs the first 2 laps to warm back up. Nothing was getting away. Ontario racers love to race to not lose, so there were lots of people covering attacks, but only a few people willing to launch them. Lots of riders felt the need to be glued to Ryan and Jeff's wheels. I did manage to get myself to the front after about 10 laps and tried a small push off the front, but I was quickly latched on to.

Off the front or off the back? Lets go with the first option :) 

After another 5 laps, things slowed down and I found myself at the front again. After a little bit of work I dropped back. Bad idea. Shit hit the fan and the group started to break apart. I was on the wrong side of that split. There was a lot of fire power in that front group. At the very least, if I couldn't get back on, I wanted a good workout. At the most I believe we had 6 guys, but it got dwindled down to 4. Over another 6-7 laps we worked hard to stay in the race. We got lucky as the front group sat up. We were able to catch back on, but we were all pretty tired from that effort. The pace picked up again soon after and I struggled to stay in the group. The pace slowed just before the final lap. Oh yeah, Casey Roth was around 40 seconds up the road. Not sure exactly when he got away, probably when I was doing a nice breakaway off the back.

Larbi attacked going into the final lap and everyone just looked at each other. They let him go. I was stuck at the back, and my legs were dead. Halfway through the lap it started to pick up again. Just after the chicane, people started launching their attacks. It was too late, Casey got first, and Larbi was too far up the road. This split the field again, and Schiller finished off with what he knows best, a good sprint. I strolled into the line for 11th, amazed I managed to get back into the group to get that.

No crashes in our race on that devious corner

Lots to work on moving forwards. I need to learn my drops more. And as always, my high end needs some work, although it is much better this year. 11th I believe is my best OCUP result so far! Next weekend I will likely head to Markham to do a criterium before I switch over to finding some races with some hills. Having Rob Rice there today was great, as he was able to point out some things for me to work on. Now hopefully I can do something with this information!

Also thanks to my mom and sister for being great race support. Great to see Komar at the beginning, he is starting to heal up, a good sign!

Garmin data: here
Results: here