Jim Taylor's account of the Winter's Road Race

The start was somewhat of an easy pace. I was joking with Dick (Dick Kiser, fellow Chain Reaction employee) about having some double jumps on the course somewhere, because I’m really a BMX rider. That gave us a little chuckle and broke up the silence of the field.

My game plan was to stay back in the field for the first lap, but I realized that I was having trouble staying back. I kept overlapping wheels; that’s when I decided to move to the front with Mike.

I found myself in a 4 man paceline, Mike, me, and 2 others. Being young and stupid, when it was my turn to pull I wanted to do it longer and harder than anybody else. Mike told me to pull off after about 35 to 40 seconds, 20 to 25 seconds is optimum time for a pull I guess. I don’t know I’ve always kept going until I got tired.

After about 4 or 5 miles of rotation I noticed that Mike hadn’t been taking turns, that’s when I decided to start hanging back, a little bit more, but I was never really that far back…anywhere from 6^th to 10^th place.

One guy tried a break just entering into the first of the rollers. People in front were falling back. I don’t think I really increased my speed but ended up catching the guy who was off the front.

Being a poor climber, and knowing the hills were coming up, I wanted to stay as close to the front as possible. I was hoping we would crest the summit just as I was falling off the back. I knew I could catch up on the descent.

All that hoping went down the drain, because as we hit the feed zone and what I thought was the summit, I was already off the back and struggling. I didn’t get any water because I thought I had enough, little did I know what was ahead of me.

As I pedaled away from the feed zone, I could see the pack disappearing over the top. I looked back to see Dick coming up behind me. I wanted to jump on his wheel, but he had too much momentum going. I kept him in sight to the top. As I crested the summit, I heard somebody say something about a sharp left on the descent. I took note of this as I shifted to my big ring and started after Dick. As I approached the sharp left, a course worker flagged me to the inside of the road (the oncoming lane) and as I rounded the corner I saw Dick on the side of the road. I thought he was just straightening his bars. As I went by I asked if everything was OK, and not hearing anything I kept going. I figured he was standing up so he was OK. Later I found out he had crashed trying to avoid another rider.

As I descended as fast as I could go (without endangering myself more than need be), I glanced up to see a right hand turn leading into another right hand turn. I couldn’t help but notice the CHP officer holding the traffic so I could go flying through the corner while running a stop sign. That whole scene is kinda funny…running a stop sign and speeding, in front of a CHP officer.

I was trying not to let my pace drop below 20mph, but I could only maintain high 18’s for any length of time (although I could occasionally kick it up to about 23mph with a little help from the backside of a roller).

I was doing pretty well and maintaining pace. Due to the heat, I had unzipped my jersey a bit and suddenly felt something hit my chest. I thought whatever it was had fallen to the ground; little did I know it had found it’s way under my right arm! Just as I realized this, so did he bee and it decided to do something about it…which, unfortunately, was to sting me three times, before I killed it or it somehow found it’s way out the back of my jersey. I thought bees were only able to sting once…maybe somebody forgot to inform this one!

After the bee incident on the first lap, it was pretty uneventful except for a cramp in my right calf.

The 500 meter sign had appeared and I had already decided to drop-out and call it a day. As I crossed the finish line, I looked ahead of me and all I could see were heat waves and more blacktop..which is not what I wanted to see.

As I approached the intersection (which later proved to be the beginning of a series of bad decisions), I asked the corner marshal if this was the way back to town. I think he heard me wrong or I didn’t make myself clear because he said yes and I ended up doing another torturous lap.

As I was riding next to the freeway I was thinking to myself this looks awfully familiar! When I rounded the corner and headed into the hills, I decided to go as far as I could. I wasn’t going to turn back. I just wanted to make it over the hill one more time.

In order to do this I had to recover and also get this over as quickly as possible. I started to think of what I should do and decided to double gu (two packets of gu) and get through the bottom rollers as soon as possible and then tackle the steep stuff when I got there.

After the rollers I knew I couldn’t power the hill so I decided to spin up it (slow and easy). It was working for awhile, but for some reason I lost it and started gasping for air…it was all I could do not to fall over. I decided to rest on the side of the road for awhile. About 2 minutes went by…it wasn’t a long time but enough to remount and keep going.

As I was climbing I started to remember some of the landmarks that stuck-out in mind, before the feed zone. As I rounded an uphill right turn I could see the feed zone ahead. As I grabbed for the first bottle, I noticed Dmitri and Vlad (Sergei’s dad and brother) running towards me. I took a big drink of water and held the bottle in my mouth as Vlad handed me another bottle. I put that one in my cage, took another big drink of water and realized that Dmitri had my second bottle of Cytomax. Unfortunately for me, he forgot it was Cytomax, because he started to squirt me with it!!! I had to grab the bottle from his hand to stop him. Since I still had some water in the first bottle, I dumped that over my head to cool myself down and wash off some of the cytomax.

I guess all the excitement gave me a burst of energy because I found myself standing up sprinting up the hill, which unfortunately proved to be a bad decision, because I had to rest on the side of the road again. This stop was a little longer, but I needed it since I was having a lot of trouble breathing in sync with my pedaling.

I remounted and got going pretty good for awhile. I could hear yelling and cheering coming from somewhere ahead of me; I knew the big climb was coming up. I decided to rest one last time before I started the steep section. As I was sitting in the shade I noticed a couple of riders coming up the hill. One of them was Mike, which surprised me because I thought he had passed me on the first climb.

I was kind of glad to see him pass me but also kind of disappointed. For one I could use him as a rabbit and see if I could chase him down. But I was also sad because that was one more person to pass me out of my group.

Anyway, I let him get out of sight before I continued on. As I was passing some course workers I couldn’t help but think that I hated bikes, well I thought I was just thinking. As it turns out, I had actually said it because one of them said "At least you look good!" I took that as a boost of encouragement and put a little more oomph in my pedal stroke.

I went over the top thinking all I have to do is catch Mike and it would be fairly easy riding in to the finish. Well as it turns out he had gotten a little further than I had anticipated, because as I came to the last two corners I noticed he had already gone through. In order for me to catch him I was going to have to hammer this last section of downhill, hold on to my speed around the corner and sprint over the little hump after the intersection. I did all this but couldn’t get close enough to make a difference.

I would like to believe that I couldn’t catch him because of a combination of things, one being too tired to catch him, two him knowing that I was trying to catch him, and three, he was riding a Y-Foil with Rolf wheels. Yeah that’s it!

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful except for the young attractive women racer who passed me just before the last turn onto the finishing stretch of the road. As she passed me we both said hi to one another trying to hide our pain. I couldn’t help but think of a way to pass her back without letting her know that I was only passing her back because she’s a girl.

I proceeded to pass her on a slight downhill, but I didn’t blow by her…I couldn’t have if I tried. We played tag for awhile until the 500 meter sign appeared…we didn’t say anything to one another, we both knew that this was a race and we were going to race to the end.

As we passed the sign we cranked it up. I don’t know how fast we were going, but it sure did hurt! Neither one of us was going to give up, we were going to win it (for lack of a better phrase). As we crossed the finish like I looked over at her and knew she had won…she was about a half a wheel in front of me.

When I realized that she had beaten me I couldn’t help but think to myself "at least she was cute" and, as I was thinking this, my left leg decided to rudely bring me back to reality by cramping so badly I had no choice but to find a soft place to land. I veered towards the right side of the road and eventually ran into the soft dirt which sent me flailing down the embankment. As this was happening, I could hear someone asking me if I was OK. I couldn’t answer because I was busy falling down…I found out it was Dick coming to see if I was OK.