Dunnigan Hills Road Race 8/14/2010

Category: W1/2/3
Field Size: 32
Length: 86 miles
Place: 16th

The course was very flat, probably the flattest road race I've done here since Cantua Creek. I like flat races, but this one was a little on the long side too. When we finished, my clock said something around 4 hours. We did two long laps, and the first one was fairly relaxed, since most of the attacks that were made didn't seem serious so early on. A couple of times there were a couple of people up the road, but we never let them get too far away. About twenty miles in my lower back started aching, so after that I didn't do very much work bringing breaks back or attacking myself. I just settled in and tried to keep myself properly fed and hydrated so that I'd have something left for the sprint, since it looked like no breaks were going to stick anyway.

Before the race, we'd been warned by the race officials that the centerline rule was being strictly enforced and if you were caught advancing across the yellow line, you'd be DQ'ed. Well, our motor ref took this very seriously and over the course of the race he DQ'ed five people. After the first one, I realized just how strict he was being and took care to generally stay on the right side of the pack and move up on that side. Anyway, on the second lap there was a group of three off the front for a long time, but they were never that far ahead, we kept them in our sights, and finally they were reeled back in with maybe 10 miles to go. We were all together with about two miles to go, though people kept making moves to get near the front, when we were informed that the finish line had been moved an extra two miles up the road and that we'd only have a single lane for the sprint. That messed up my plan since we were supposed to have the full road for the last half mile, so I was hoping to be able to get to a better position at that point. However, we stayed single lane right to the finish and I didn't have the energy to stay at the front since everyone was trying to do that and the pack kept churning. As a result, I was stuck in the middle when the sprint finally came, though no one had much room to sprint anyway.

Also very cool was that my parents were in town for this race and both of them raced too! Mom was riding my commuter bike, which fit her ok with some adjustments, and Dad rode Jose's cross bike, which fit pretty well. Mom did the Womens 30+ race, all 42 miles of it. She had never raced before so she got dropped by the main group about 7 miles in, but rode most of the rest of race with another lady. Dad rode in the 45+ Cat 5 field and finished with the pack. He was disappointed that they didn't have the whole road to finish on because he didn't get to sprint and he wasn't tired at all. We all had fun racing and stopped for IHOP on the way back.