The State Championship Road Race weekend is the last state-wide race of the 2009 season. You find that some racers love Criteriums and some don’t but EVERYBODY loves a road race and we had the numbers to prove it. With over 120 riders in the Master’s 30-44 and over 100 in the Master’s 45+ races the racing was fast and furious.
The weekend is broken up into two days with the first day being Age Day and the second day being Category day. On a typical weekend, you can race either or both but not this weekend. The other interesting thing is that the age brackets are only 5 years apart, so 30-34 is scored separated that 35-39, etc..
The course itself was the same course as last year’s Category race day with a 5 mile loop that offered up a difficult power climb just after the start/finish line. The rest of the course was rollers with a crazy fast downhill finish. We had more record temperatures on Saturday with the highs in the low 90’s. The feed zone on the uphill offered welcome water from helpful teammates and it was needed.
Both Master’s races were 8 laps with the 30-44 starting first. With lap times of less than 15 minutes, the late start of the Master’s 45+, due to the difficulty in finding a driver for the wheel truck, had both groups on the course just a couple of minutes apart and their fates were inter-twined today. As the 30-44 group came down to the field sprint all together, a horrific crash happened that took out major sections of the peleton. It was one of the worse crashes I have seen as close to 10ambulances showed up on scene. But our man Vinny weaved his way through the carnage and snagged the State Championship Win. Congrats.
In an interview with Vinnny he was quoted as saying " The race was very hard and fast. I haven’t been on the bike in awhile but I still ended up pulling if off somehow, because I am a “Bad Ass”. Yup, I just want to prove everyone wrong about me because they are always talking crap about me by calling me “Fat Ass” and “Slow Ass”. I have still got it. But it was very hard and I ended up pulling it off. Was I lucky? Very! It was actually a fun, fun race and I enjoyed it.".
The Masters 45+ group ended up being stopped for around 30 minutes just sitting out on the course. Just prior to this a small group of five, including our own Steve Griffith, were off the front and they got a head start when the road was cleared of accident victims and managed to stay away for the rest of the race with Steve coming in 4th.
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