independence valley
last saturday was the "independence valley road race" in rochester, wa. longish drive. cool course. two hills one considerably steeper than the other. they were separated on one side by flat farm land through a valley and on the other by a rolling wooded road. i thought it was pretty cool. challenging too, aparently as there were lots of splits over the hills. we had a small crew there with ian, tony, brad and i.
the race ran as i expected with breaks going that didn't include the big interests in the washington cup. we expected tony and brad to have an opportunity to get into those moves and get results for themselves but the hills proved to be a little too shocking to tony's legs and brad was disqualified for going over the yellow center line on a descent. bummer. anyway, ian and i covered a lot of moves but let some go as well. the thought was that if we covered everything something would eventually go and that something might be a threat to the washington cup. team leaders can't do everything on their own. sure enough, a break of four got off. two other teams were forced to work after we demonstrated that we weren't willing to do it but it just wasn't enough to bring it back. over the final climb i found my self in a group of four which i thought would make it across but we were chased down by the axley team, protecting michael emde. we did however, have a group of a bit more than 10 and that group mostly worked together for the final 10 miles and almost caught the lead group of 4. ian and i took the field sprint to get 5th and 6th. all in all, not bad considering what we had to work with.
photo by bikcafe.net
we're a goofy bunch. me with my big ass ears, archibald on the right there with his 'stache.
