Carter Race Report...Or How to Take Dead Last in a TT and Still Finish 2nd Overall

Horse Country TT, Denton Rhapsody Crit, and Jesuit Road Race

So it was another exciting weekend of bike racing for me and my family. My wife, Julie, took her college riders to Tunis Roubaix for the first collegiate racing of the season. I decided to stay close to home and went to the races near Denton,TX. At first I was going to race just the crit and RR because I am not that good at Time Trials. I was home alone for the weekend with no wife and kids and I got incredibly bored so I thought “what the heck, I have nothing else to do,” so off to the TT I went. Now for those of you who do not know me very well, I do not Time Trial at all. I do not own a TT bike, the closest thing I have is a pair of short clip-ons to put on my road bike. So I must have been REALLY bored to convince myself that this was a good idea. I am also one of those guys that coaches hate because I do not warm up for anything, just a little bit of a ride from the car to the line and I am ready to race. Just for the record that is not a good idea for Time Trials. Hindsight is always 20/20. I started out really good and after about 3k I thought I was catching my 30sec man. Well, it went all down hill from there. I quickly remembered why I do not do Time Trials. They hurt way too much and I do not have the desire to push myself that hard by myself. So needless to say I got dead last. It was expected though and it was worth laughing about so I had a lot of fun regardless.

Next up was the Rhapsody Crit. This was a cool little course. With wide open corners I figured that this was going to be a very fast course. The race was very aggressive from the start and I quickly found myself in a 9 man break. Just as we were getting ready to lap the pack, Brett Crosby (TX tough) attacked to be the first to lap up. This was a great move, if he could make it to the pack before anyone else from the break could, he had his team there to drive the field and make it hard for the rest of the break to catch up, if not impossible. Ryan Dewald (Batley-Harley Davidson) chased after him immediately. I recognized the potential danger that was happening and I went after them. It was by far the hardest effort I did all day, and the only thing that was going through my mind was “why did I do that Time Trial this morning, this is not good”. I finally made it to the pack and was able to rest only to find out by the time I made it to the front of the pack that Ryan had gone solo off the front. Now we still had something like 30 laps to go and after what I had just gone through to get to where I was, I was happy to cut my losses and take a chance that I was racing for second place, knowing that I had a good shot in the sprint. Long story short that is how it ended up, Ryan made it look easy and rode away from us and I won the sprint for second, and my man Jesse Moran finished third.

Finally was the Jesuit Road Race. This race was pretty straight forward, it was the last race of the weekend and I just really wanted to ride as hard as I could to get some good race miles in the legs. After the first few miles of just “chilled riding” it started to get aggressive. Team Velossimo was on the front trying to keep it all together until, their man who won the Time Trial, Vasanth Coorg, could get into the right move. After a few attempts at establishing a break, I finally was able to get away with 7 other riders including Vasanth, Ryan Dewald, Brett Crosby, and Colt Trant. It was a good move; the elastic broke from the field and we were gone. With 30 miles to go, it was a nice steady ride to the finish. With 3k to go I expected some of the guys were going to start attacking to try and get away, but that never happened and I thought “this is good for me, I can win this”. With 1 k to go we started playing cat and mouse with each other, no one wanting to pull and work. With 300 meters to go I started my sprint and was able to take the win with Ryan getting second and Vasanth coming in third.

This weekend was a lot of fun and it helped out a lot of high school junior racers. It was a lot of good race training and it was good to see some old friends. See you at the races.

~ Josh Carter