Boulder Roubaix 2006
April 8, 2006
My goal for this year was to win a race. Any race. After being disabused
of the notion that I was a climber by some lithe teammates, I realized my
best chance to win a race is a hard road race. Preferably with a small weak
field. And a lot of mechanical trouble for the other contenders. My plan to
was race early and often and hopefully one day luck would shine on me. A day
where I’d make the right move at the right time and have the legs and lungs
to pull it off…
I met Chris Busacca, Kris Thompson, and John Guillaume at Chipotle down on
We were down on
The Boulder Roubaix road race was being run on the day before the famous
Paris-Roubaix classic in France, where world champion Tom Boonen will be trying
to defend his title against George Hincapie and another 150 or so of the best
professional riders in the world. Our race is run on 80% on dirt roads, north
of
The course is an 8-mile loop that is almost entirely dirt. The only section that is paved is on Nelson, on the north side of the rectangular course, and this is a very fast section. There are three hills of note on this course, all very short. The first is the rise going north just before you hit Nelson. The second hill is on the road going south from Nelson and was dubbed the Bossberg in last year's Boulder Stage Race. This is a good place to attack on the final lap. The final hill is just after you turn west and head toward the finish. This hill is surprisingly tough, especially after the usual super hard effort that you'll have done on the last lap and it will split the final field coming into the finish. In general, this course isn't nearly as tough as Koppenberg, but the race is a lot longer and will be a race of attrition as well, but there will be more riders at the end and there is no place that would decisively split the field like the Koppenberg Hill.
The most dangerous spot on the course is just after turning south onto the
dirt from
I
met John and David at 7:30 a.m. the next morning at the trailhead parking
near 39th and
Our race strategy was for Rich and Shawn to be in charge of lap one. They didn’t need to lead the peloton, but they were to be up front managing things. If any single rider attacked, they could let him go, but not too far. If necessary, they would go to the front and gradually reel it in.
The race started really slow and I was well back in the pack. Nothing was
happening, so I wasn’t worried about missing any moves, especially with such
a big team, but it’s safer near the front, so I moved up after a bit. One
guy attacked off the front and I didn’t care about him, as this was a long
race, but I didn’t like the slow pace. I found Rich Zirk and sent him to the
front to raise the pace. It took him awhile to work his way to the front because
the peloton filled the road completely. Once we got to
Second lap
Just before the end of the first lap, David found himself off the front on the final climb and decided to continue. The peloton let him go. He tried to bridge up to the other escapee, but the lead guy never looked back. If he had, he might have waited for David and they could have worked together, but since he didn’t, they were both stuck in no man’s land, working solo.
Our plan was for Kris to up the tempo and string things out on the second lap, but we couldn’t chase down our teammate, so we sat back and coasted. No one else did much to up the pace and we continued around at a very comfortable pace.
About halfway through the second lap we caught David and Kris went right
to the front and made things tough. The pace strung out the field and we were
dropping riders off the back.
Third lap
At the start of the third lap, I was right behind Kris and knew he was working hard. I didn’t want to take the lead, as I had teammates for that job. I dropped back a bit and asked Shawn to head up to the front to help out Kris. Shawn got up there and took a hard turn at the front, but he was tired from the pace and that would be the last he’d see of the front.
The pace was still too slow for me and there were too many riders left in
the lead group. I asked Kris once again to give me a huge effort when we hit
the dirt at the end of
Kris is a former national Cat. 4 (yes, they had this one year) champion. He knows what he’s doing and he worked things hard on the dirt. I was still feeling really good, sitting in my favorite position: on Kris’ wheel. When we hit the Bossberg, I went around Kris, not to full-on attack, but semi-attack to just see what kind of legs the group had. I went hard up the Bossberg with Busacca on my wheel saying what he said the last time I attacked in the Koppenberg: “Go, go, go, we have a gap.” I went hard for 30-40 seconds and pulled off to see that we still had all five Rocky Mounts and still two of the ? team. My job of raising the effort, was accomplished and I slid into 7th or 8th position and cruised along.
Rocky Mounts was still on the front as we neared the bottom of the hill and were going to turn west. Busacca came up to me and said, “We’re doing too much work at the front and not getting any gaps.” We weren’t trying to gap the field, like in an attack, we were driving to hurt the peloton and drop the stragglers off the back. In this we were quite successful and the lead group was now pretty small. I responded to Chris, “We can’t just sit up and relax. No one else will take the lead and work hard. Why would they? We have five riders and the next biggest team only has three. The job is ours whether we like it or not. If we sit up now, then the stragglers can just catch back on.” He got me thinking, though. We needed to hurt the three riders from the Boulder Performance Network (BPN) team.
During
the acceleration after the Bossberg, I bounced my second water bottle, the
full one, out of its cage. Racing for over 1.5 hours on just one small bottle
wasn’t what I wanted. I knew Kris had brought three bottles, but when I looked
up at him, I could see that his third bottle, previously tucked into his jersey
pocket was gone. I couldn’t ask the others for some of their water, but I
was tempted.
Fourth lap
Rocky Mounts are amassed at the front as we neared the end of the third lap. I didn’t like seeing three riders from the BPN team just sitting on all the work we were doing. Our pace setting had trimmed the field to less than half the starting group, but I didn’t want these guys to get a free ride to the closing moves of the race. I went to the front with new instructions for my team. No Rocky Mounts were to be at the front of the race unless we were attacking, or chasing down a break. It was time for the BPN team to get worked over. I called for repeated solo attacks until the BPN riders were completely toasted.
We sent John first, but either he was tired or not giving it his best effort. He got off the front, though, and the rest of us eased up. Sure enough, the BPN riders came around and worked to close it down. Kris went next and got a little gap, and the BPN riders started to close on him. I had their wheel and heard one call to the other, “Let him go.” This was probably the right call, as Kris wasn’t moving off the front much and had done so much work the entire race, that it wasn’t likely he could stay away. Nevertheless, the other riders closed it down on Kris as well.
I figured if we kept this up, these guys weren’t going to last long and Rocky Mounts was guaranteed a victory. We had still more than six miles to the finish and all the hard riding to go, but I was at the front and felt it was my turn to attack. I figured not to get very far either, but I was determined to make these guys work. It was so far out that I planned to have time to get caught, rest up, and then launch another, hopefully winning, attack. So I jumped. Hard.
I launch from the third position and went at a full-on sprint. Before I knew it I had fifty meters on the field. Later I’d learn that this time when a BPN team member called “Let him go,” they did. That turned out to be a big mistake and the winning move was made. Later my teammates would say that they knew it right then. Of course, I didn’t know any of this at the time, but I’d been taught that if you are going to attack, go with everything you’ve got and keep giving it everything you’ve got until you know it is hopeless. So I dug deep.
I went on a flat section of the course, not my favorite terrain for an attack,
but I wanted continual attacks and launched about ten seconds after Kris was
caught. I jumped across to the left side of the road to free myself of anyone
jumping on my wheel. I’m not known for exceptional acceleration and wanted
to the extra room to give me time to get up to speed. I needn’t have worried,
since no one came with me. I hammered down the long straight away, in full
view of the peloton, with no place to hide. The steep hill leading up to 
The stretch on
I was lapping citizen riders, which started a few minutes after us, and passing dropped Cat. 4/5 riders, which started a few minutes in front of us. I couldn’t work with any other categories, as that would be cheating, but it wouldn’t have helped me anyway, as I blew by all these riders, never pausing for even a second of draft. Solo, I could take the turn off Nelson onto the dirt at high speed and I did. I was going to fast when I hit the gravel that I almost couldn’t make the slight curve left a bit later.
At this point I started to realize that this was going to be my only move. I had put out so much effort for so long that I wouldn’t have been able to recover had the peloton caught me. This was it. All or nothing. For a moment I wondered if I had blown it by going so early. I hadn’t planned on being on the rivet for 20+ minutes of solo time trailing. I then decided that win or lose, this was going to be an attack worth remembering. We’d either be celebrating at the finish or chuckling at the total implosion of Bill Wright.
My mouth now hung constantly opening, sucking in as much oxygen as fast as I could. My breathing was so hard that drool was forced out of my mouth with every breath. I didn’t have the look of an impossibly strong Tom Boonen comfortably soloing to victory. No, I looked like a man at his absolute limit, running scared.
I powered over the Bossberg Hill in a lower gear, trying to spin a bit more and save my quads. I hammered the downhill after it and the chicane a bit further. The slight uphill heading west seemed shorter than I remembered it and when I looked back, I didn’t see the peloton. All the turns and hills were helping me to keep out of sight. I was close now. I flew down the right side of the final descent and took the final turn fast, swinging wide. I worked hard up the final hill, passing more riders and then onto the long, final straight away. I still had nearly a mile to the finish. At one point, when I looked back, I thought I saw a peloton of riders. It turned about to be a coalescing of passed riders, but at the time I thought it might be the peloton breathing down my neck. I put my head down and suffered some more, telling myself only two more minutes, two more minutes.
With 200 meters to go, the group behind me was further back and I knew I had won. At 100 meters, I did what I had always dreamed of doing. I sat up and rode no-handed towards the finish line. I felt a bit silly, but I even put both hands up as I crossed the finish line. With other races going on, I didn’t want anyone to be confused that I was finishing my race. Finishing my race in first place for the first time ever!
A minute or less after, the peloton came in as a wave of Rocky Mounts blue. They had broken the BPN team on the final hill and lead each other out at the finish. The top five finishers were:
1. Bill Wright (Rocky Mounts – Izze)
2. David Kutcipal (Rocky Mounts – Izze)
3. Kris Thompson (Rocky Mounts – Izze)
4. John Guillaume (Rocky Mounts – Izze)
5. Chris Busacca (Rocky Mounts – Izze)
Now that’s a dominate team performance! After riding halfway back to the
car, Kris, David, and I turned around. We’d forgotten to pick up our awards.
At the start it took about ten minutes to figure things out and make sure
the results were final before the announcer called out our names and we mounted
the nice podium there at the finish. A photographer shot photos of us and
Kris and David got their medals. I got a big rock with a plaque attached to
it, a pound of coffee, and a six pack of beer, the latter of which I gave
to my team. The coffee, I kept.
Why Cycling is a Team Sport
Was I the strongest rider in this race? Maybe. Maybe not. Even if I was the strongest rider, could I have won without my team? Emphatically no. I used to think that it was silly to call cycling a team sport. I just didn’t see it. Why couldn’t an unattached rider just use the draft of another team? Actually, he often can and if it ends as a bunch sprint and the unattached rider is the best sprinter he might win. Robbie McEwen has made a career of this on the Pro Tour. But an unattached rider wouldn’t have one this race, because the Rocky Mounts wouldn’t have let it come to a sprint finish, at least if they knew a superior sprinter was in the peloton. So, how could they have prevented it? By constantly launching attacks, like we did, and letting other riders chase it down and tire themselves out.
I was lucky in that my attack stuck. Probably any of the top five Rocky Mounts riders could have won this race, but I was the lucky one today. For the second week in a row, I owe Kris big time. He was on the front of this race so often, you’d have thought he was leading a parade. I’m just waiting for the call to help him. I’m ready to do what needs to be done. Chris did some great blocking work and I know it was so very hard for him not to attack. We are of the same breed here and I’m not sure I could have done the same. Like him, I’m still learning as well. But he banked some karma, that’s for sure. Chris was almost taken out on the last curve by Ian Adamson, a famous adventure racer, of the BPN team that he had been blocking. Chris displayed some remarkable bike handing in not going down. David and John were on the front plenty. Rich and Shawn did their work early. Everyone seems to have the same attitude now: It’s so much more fun racing with a strong team. It makes the suffering somehow easier.
Lastly, I probably owe some of this victory to Matt Vawter…for not racing this weekend and allowing the wealth to be spread around. I’d like to see a lot of Rocky Mounts winning races this year. In the last three weekends of racing Busacca has finished 4th, 5th, and 6th. I’m sure he thinking that a 7th would go nicely in that grouping…
What it means to win…
It’s just a local 35+/Cat. 4 race, so how can it be a big deal to win? Because it’s hard to win any bike race, even in the easiest division. Bike racers aren’t like running races, which are even harder to win because there are rarely categories for running races, but the bike racing fields are full of fit athletes. Only fit athletes. A bike race isn’t like a running race where 75% of the field is not very fit. Bike races also equalize the talent that is there via the drafting effect. Weaker riders can stay with the pack much easier in biking than in running and, if they are a good sprinter, can sometimes steal the race in the end. In a running race there are usually one a few guys capable of winning at the start. Everyone else is running against the clock. In bike races, many racers have the potential to win at the start. It all depends how things play out. The point is that winning a bike race is hard.
This might be the only win of my life, but I have one now. Naturally, that just makes me hungrier for more and more confident that I can actually get it done. At least if I’m riding with the Rocky Mounts – Izze Cycling Team.