Starbucks Gran Prix 10/04/09 Race Report by Terry Davis

“Battle at the Beach”

This Sunday found a number of TAI members racing cyclocross out at MFG’s third race of their inaugural season. The weather was perfect with hardly a cloud in the sky. The temperature was in the 40s as the racing started about 9:30 am, but it kept rising throughout the day to end up in the 60s. The morning dew was out in force making the course rather slick for the warm-up and early racing. It ended up producing a couple nice slick spots throughout the course. The promoters touted that this course as very fast with a severe beach crossing mixed in to compensate for the lack of hills. The description was dead-on as you will read about below.

I arrived around 8:00 am with cheering squad, my wife and daughter. They are the best support crew putting up with my tunnel focus before the race. They are so patient.

THE COURSE (http://www.mfgcyclocross.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Starbucks_Course.jpg): The overriding majority of the course was flat bumpy grass. Someone called it “grass-criterium” racing, but with lots of semi-wide 180 turns and off-camber sections throughout, it ended up being a very challenging cross course. They started things off on the eastern section of the park around the Hydro pits. Once they got us over to the western side of the park heading toward the beach, they threw in some nice quick off-camber turns over 5-ft high mounds of dirt with nice trees roots involved in a lot of them. One of these quick turns added a little fun due to the S-style through two trees and a steep pitch before the second turn on the other side. In traffic this section slowed the pack severely, but once things opened up, it proved who had bike handling skills and who didn’t. Enough about turns, bring on the heart of this course “THE BEACH.” The entrance to the Beach was at the course’s farthest western point in the park. They set it up making a sweeping right turn with a big step in the middle of the turn to get down into the sand. The step killed any initial momentum you had, so I figured after my first attempt at it that I would be better off dismounting and running the entire beach. I love cross, it always offers options for the riders with pros and cons associated with each choice. In this case, the option was to run your bike in a straight line across the beach or you could ride 90% of the way along the seawall with a couple sections of dismounting. For me, the straight line option worked the best. However, as I said there were pros and cons. I found I beat the riders taking the seawall tactic by a number of bike lengths, but the running killed my legs, so they caught up shortly thereafter on the straightaway before the finish line. After the beach, they brought us back to the overall course design, grass with lots of turns and a set of barriers. I especially loved the very sharp 180 turn just before getting back onto the start/finish stretch.



For the Masters 35+ Category 4 race, TAI had Bob McGee, Chris Liebsch, and myself working it and Francisco Pons racing in the 2nd wave for the Masters 45+ race. The race was advertised as 30-minute, but it ended up almost a 40 minute race for me as I was 5 minutes off the winning time. Given the flatness of the course, I knew this was going to be an interesting race for me, but overall I think I did pretty well. This type of course favors the “Power” riders and I’m just not there yet. However, what was interesting was that as I got passed by the speed guys on the flats, I found myself catching them through the technical turns and off-camber sections. So, if I could have recovered faster and had more on the back half I think I could have moved up. Oh well, it is back to the training grounds and more pain for me.

In the Masters 35+ race (68 riders deep) TAI members finished 21st -Bob M, 23rd -Chris L. and 41st for myself. As for Francisco P in the 45+ race, he finished 10th after catching and passing me. Great job Francisco!

According to the results the only other TAI member racing was Matt Lynch who finished 14th in the Category 1-2 Masters 35+. Matt, I can't even imagine how fast that race was; WOW very impressive!

I’m out next weekend as my wife and I celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary. Have fun either at MFG Cross Clash on Saturday or SCC Beverly Park on Sunday.

~Terry Davis



Pictures of Bob McGee on the beach and Chris are compliments of Joe Martin.