Going fast & having fun

Written by: Chris Hahn

Masters’ 60+ National Championship Road Race
Augusta GA, July 27

Early this year, when USA Cycling announced that Masters’ Nationals would be in Augusta again, somewhere in the back of my mind I got this crazy idea that I could win the road race. The Fort Eisenhower (formerly Fort Gordon) course is pretty good for me, with no real long climbs, but rolling the whole time. The longest hill comes right at the end, maybe a kilometer long, with a flat 50 meters or so after the summit for a wheelsucking sprinter like me to recover a bit, and then 200 more flat meters to
sprint to the finish. Kind of like San Luis Rey, though the climb is not nearly as long. My fourth place lastyear was excruciating and all I could do, but it was extremely hot and I had had quite a bit of bad luck (much of it, as usual for me, self-induced). This year the race was a month earlier, and so supposedly it would only be very hot and humid, not off the charts extremely hot and humid. I thought maybe with some good luck (i.e., better preparation) if I could just dig a little deeper and hang with the best climbers, I could win in a sprint. So that was what I was kind of thinking all season. I actually worked in some hill interval sessions on Ladera during the hottest part of the day. And I kept pushing myself at the Tuesday Hammerfest, though for the last few weeks it was just Robert Neary and I trying to come up with creative ways to torture ourselves. (Thanks, Robert!) But I also got sick three times during the season, and so lost valuable training time, and never felt super fit enough to take on the best guys in the country. I was undecided about even going until about two weeks before, when my form started coming around. Tendays before, my son said, “Dad, if you don’t go you definitely won’t win,” and that clinched it.
Our new favorite Team 805 booster, Elizabeth, came with me and with her help this year I did most everything right. We got there a few days early, so I could adjust to the heat and the 7 a.m. (Eastern!)start time. We got a place super nearby, so I wouldn’t be delayed getting to the race again by a 20-minute-long freight train crossing. On race morning, despite the extremely early start, we actually got there with plenty of time to spare. I was warmed up and stress-free, and I had Elizabeth in the feed zone to hand me a bag each lap containing a slushy bottle of my energy drink and a sock filled with ice cubes to keep me cool. And then the race started. 58 miles, and a guy goes from the gun. I didn’t know him, and the two guys I was watching the most, Norm Alvis and Jerome Nadel, didn’t react. Two more guys go, and then two more guys. By half-way through the first lap, 50 miles to go, a break of five has established itself off the front. On the downhills, where the large field would roll up to 40 miles an hour, their lead would come down to about 45 seconds. But on the uphills and the flats, where they would be going hard and no one
from the field wanted to commit to chasing, it would stretch out again up to a minute and a half. Sometimes we could see them up the road, but a lot of the time they were out of sight. I was going crazy. Jerome and Norm are kind of neutralizing each other and there is no serious chase. “Do I attack and try to get across? It’s kind of early.” “Do I try to stay patient and stay comfortable in the field? It sure is going to be disappointing if this break stays away the whole time and I never get to race.”
I sit with this tension mile after mile. We come to the end of the first lap, where the feed zone is at the top of the final hill. Elizabeth hands me the bag, smooth as silk. I’ve got a fresh cold bottle and ice melting down my back. “Ah, that feels good.” But the inner tension wants to gnaw me to pieces. “Relax,” I try to say to myself, “when the time is right you’ll know what to do.” Half way through the second lap, I see my opportunity. The gap’s come down a bit to maybe a minute, and there’s a little
ramp where I can separate myself. I attack and get the gap. Over the next mile or so I make some progress against the break. Over the next mile or so the break’s gap is holding steady. I don’t want to commit myself fully and burn all my matches because it is not clear that I’m going to be able to make it across. Over the next mile or so the field is reeling me in and I abandon the chase effort and let the field catch me. Back to watching and waiting and dealing with the inner tension.

We hit the feed zone the second time. Elizabeth hands me the bag but as I reach for it with my right hand the impact is heavy, I swerve hard one-handed to the right and then over-correcting to the left a little bit. “Whoa, that was close.”
The third lap is steady, with the gap to the break of five still hovering between 45 seconds and a minute and a half, and I’m still waiting for the what-to-do answer to come to me. At the bottom of the main climb at the end of the lap I get the urge to go hard. Since there’s not much draft it will cost the field almost as much as it will cost me. Maybe I can get across. Even if not, if the field chasing me brings us all closer to the break, that will encourage more people to work and it should bring down the gap. So I sidle off the front, sitting and spinning a high cadence to avoid destroying my legs or being too obvious. Surprisingly, I get a pretty good gap right away. I would have thought at least some climbers would have tried to come with me. So I commit a bit more, and hold the gap across the top, through the finish-line with the one lap to go bell, and into the final lap where the course starts to descend again. But I see the field strung out single-file behind me in a pretty serious chase. So I throttle back and get absorbed by
the field again. Now I’ve tried twice to get across to the break and failed. My legs let me know it. But my effort and the field’s subsequent chase have succeeded at one thing – the break is clearly visible now, only about 45 seconds ahead. And sure enough, with the break within sight, there are a number of attacks to try to get across, and with the field chasing down these attacks the overall pace stays high and the break remains relatively within reach.
So I’m sitting in this situation for about half of the last lap. I know I’ve got to do something. I can’t risk the gap going back up. With about seven miles to go the field slows a bit as we approach a small hill. Norm and Jerome are in front of me on the right and I see my opportunity. I launch hard, on the left. I get my gap and begin to cover some ground. This time I am all in, 100%. There won’t be another chance if I fail again this time. I am making progress on the break, but it is taking a long time. The gas is
seeping out of the tank. Finally, after a few miles I’m about 50 meters behind the break and I know I’m going to make it. I latch on. There are only a few miles to go. I pull through. “C’mon guys, we can do this.” The break is totally disorganized. Two guys aren’t pulling at all. Are they exhausted or sandbagging? I don’t know. One guy is attacking more than pulling. It’s too early for that. We need cohesion or we’ll all get caught. “C’mon guys, if we get caught by the field all your work will be wasted.”
Sure enough, behind we can see the tell-tale lime green helmet of big Norm Alvis. The fear of Stormin’ Norman motivates the break and we get organized. Norm catches us anyway, only a kilometer from the bottom of the final climb. He sits on for a minute, then attacks on the downhill to the base of the climb. The high speed suits his massive, powerful frame. I manage to latch on, and one guy behind me. Norm sits up, and we are on the climb. Now it’s time to find out what the other guys have, and what I have
left. One guy pulls through, and I get on his wheel. Another guy jumps us, and I get on his wheel. He is pulling steady, and I am not dying. I look back. “What the H….?” We have a gap! We’re half way up the climb, it is just him and me, and he is still pulling. I sit on maybe another 50 meters, waiting for him to jump. He doesn’t. I do.

Postscript: My power felt good and I was out of the saddle for the rest of the climb. By the top, I knew I had a huge gap and began the celebration, pointing to the Team 805 on the jersey. Unfortunately, I was passing a rider who the announcers didn’t realize was lapped, so they interrupted my victory celebration to warn me that the “race wasn’t over.” The last guy I dropped, Thomas Cipolla, hung on for second. Some chasers from the field actually caught the remnants of the break on the climb. So third and fourth
came from the field. Norm Alvis, after storming across solo in the last few miles and then attacking right before the climb, was the only other guy from the break to place, in fifth.