ABRT at the Superior Bike Fest Omnium
Jim Johnson provided daily e-mail updates as he raced the Superior Bike Fest Omnium in Michigan. These have been consolidated into this report.
Hello from Michigan. I'm currently here, in the beautiful Upper Peninsula., on vacation and doing the Superior Bike Fest Omnium and thought the team would be interested in how it's going. The omnium consists of a criterium on Friday night, a road race on Saturday and a circuit race on Sunday. I'm racing in the 35+ open category. Here's the report for the Friday night Twilight Criterium in downtown Marquette (overlooking Lake Superior.)
Criterium:
My race started at 9pm with temperatures at about 60 degrees F, slight breeze and raining. The course is .7 miles and is square starting on the main thoroughfare thru town, turning left and down hill for 2 blocks, left and down hill again for about 2 long blocks and then 2 more lefts up hill to get back to the start. The race was open to all Cat’s and the official 35+ field was small so we had a number of CAT 1,2 and 3 riders race to help out teammates. The field at the start line was probably 35-40. At the start of the race, Priority Health and Ace Hardware teams grabbed the front. I planted myself in the top 10 and tried to stay out of the wind. A break went off the front with an Ace Hardware guy and a Two Wheel Tango guy but we brought them back pretty quickly. Either Ace, Priority Health or one of the other teams attacked each time we brought a break back for about the first 10 laps or so. With about 15 laps to go, a 2 man break got away and stayed about 8-15 seconds away until about 7 to go. Things really heated up at this point as Priority Health, Two Wheel Tango and Breakaway Bikes tried to get something going and upped the pace. The rain had stayed away for about 2 races before this one but was now making up for lost time. At the bottom of the course at turn 3 where the pavement points back uphill to the finish line, it was getting pretty crazy. A number of street service connections and a manhole kept riders shifting lines at the last minute. The upturn in speed and the now wet road made things that much more sketchy. By 2 laps to go we were screaming down Spring Street for turn 3 and 4. Exiting turn 3, if you weren’t out of the saddle and cranking hard up the hill and around turn 4, you were off the back with no chance to catch up. On the final lap, I had worked my way up to 5th or 6th. The sprint started out of turn 3 as expected and exploded out of turn 4. We were down to about 18 riders at this time with the top 8 sprinting for the win. A guy from SC racing came flying around me and I tried to catch his wheel but he was pulling away fast. In the drops and cranking hard I managed to place 4th. Great race. Wonderful crowd. 2 races to go but this one was worth the whole trip.
Road Race:
Another good day of racing on stage 2. Cool temps, fog and light drizzle were the condition for this race. The road race here is a 55 mile lollipop shaped course with 2 major climbs, 1 long descent and an uphill finish. Priority Health, Ace Hardware and Two Wheel Tango had a significant presence with 2 or 3 other teams having 2 or 3 members present. This being the State Road Championship race, it brought racers from all over Michigan so the competition was pretty stiff. Being a lone rider, my thought was to stay near the front and look for a promising breakaway to latch on to. The start was pretty uneventful, with only a couple of attacks being made by the smaller teams early on. The first climb was early in the race and didn’t have much effect on the peleton. At about the 15 mile mark, a 3 man break went off the front with riders from Priority Health, Two Wheel Tango and Ace Hardware. I noticed that 2 of the riders in the break had placed in the top 10 in the Crit and who I knew were pretty strong. Although pretty early in the race, it seemed that this break had all the markings of being able to stick so I bridged up. Now a 4 man break, we got into a paceline rhythm and started flying. Covered by the fog and protected from chases by the 3 larger teams, we pretty much walked away from the pack. At about mile 40, the rider from Ace Hardware dropped a chain. Down to 3 men in the break and 15 miles to go we were really working to keep our lead. The final major climb came at mile marker 47. With 5 miles to the finish, the Two Wheel Tango rider blew up and we dropped him. For the last 5 miles, the Priority Health rider and I continued to work together until the climb to the finish. He had been hanging back on the other climbs and he seemed pretty cooked. 100 meters into the final climb I attacked coming around him fast and shake him off my wheel. He didn’t even chase me. I came across the finish line 1st putting 30 seconds into him and 1:30 into the rest of the field. Some days it is better to be lucky than good. This was one of those days.
Circuit Race:
Once again, overcast sky’s, cool temps and the, ever present, threat of rain were the conditions for the last stage of the Superior Bike Fest. This circuit race was a fast 2.5 miles course with a ¾ mile, very steep climb and a 1 + mile descent to the start/finish line that includes 2 very narrow and sharp corners to navigate through. Originally slated for 4 laps, we were reduced to 3 due to a wreck in one of the aforementioned corners that delayed our start. It was a sprint from the start. My goal was to defend my current position on the GC and advance it if possible and to that end, I kept an eye on the 2 riders ahead of me and the 2 riders behind me in the classification. First attack came on the climb on the 1st lap. The rider was no threat so I held my place. About ½ way up the climb we caught him and the SC Racing rider in 1st in the GC attacked. I jumped his wheel and kept with him to the start/finish line at which time we were caught. SC Racing dropped back into the pack and I continued to watch the attacks. On the final lap, Two Wheel Tango sent a man off the front and an Ace Hardware rider went with him. I jumped and blew around a Priority Health rider I was marking and caught on the Ace Hardware rider’s wheel. By this time we were on the descent to the finish line and we were screaming through the turns. Coming out of the saddle after the last turn, we sprinted for the finish, Ace Hardware in the lead followed by Two Wheel Tango and myself (3rd.). The SC Racing rider finish 8th and the Priority Health rider DNF’d so ABRT took the lead in the GC. Once again, this is a great race series held in beautiful surroundings and well organized and well worth doing.
Jim Johnson
Editor's Note: Jim was being modest and does not make it clear in his reports that he won the 35+ omnium in this event, even though he was racing alone against strong teams.
