On Sunday I raced in the Zamora (Bariani) Road Race out near Woodland. I entered in the Masters 35+ 5 category. The weather was forecast to be clear with strong north winds. They nailed that forecast for sure! It was blowing steady 20-25mph with gusts up to 30. This race is 3 laps of a nice 10 mile loop. The profile is mostly flat, with a few rollers and one significant climb. The wind was obviously the huge factor today. The race starts downwind for about 500 yards, then a right hand turn into the nasty cross wind. Another 1/2 mile up and you turn due north and ride a frontage road which parallels Highway 505. Everyone was jockeying for position to stay out of the wind. This meant riding in the gutter at times, but you'd rather ride the gutter than have your face in the wind yesterday. The gutter was more of a shoulder with some randome grass & weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement. The pack mostly stayed together until we turned right onto County Rd 13, then a small break of about 10 got away on the rollers. I noticed I had 3 of my Rio Strada team mates up in that group, so I was content to stay in the 2nd group for a bit. I didn't want to put in too much of an effort on the 1st lap to try and bridge up to them. So the beauty of having team mates in the lead group is that I didn't have to do any work at the front of my group for the remainder of the race. I just sat in, and tried to remain as sheltered from the wind as possible. When we hit the first climb I felt good so gave it a little extra gas and our group then broke up into two smaller groups of about 10. It pretty much stayed this way for the next two laps. On the final climb on the final lap two guys jumped and I tried to chase them down but wasn't able to quite catch them. In doing so however I dropped the rest of my group and was now riding solo for the last stretch of the course which was a nasty cross wind. I could see those two guys just ahead of me like a dangling carrot, but riding alone it would have been nearly impossible for me to catch them. I looked back and saw that I had about a 500 yard gap on the remnants of the group. So I just put my head down and gave it all I had left. It was so windy I dared not take my hands of the bars. Then I had to do a no-handed snot rocket which isn't all that fun... I finally made the last left hand turn into the finishing stretch which thankfully was DOWN WIND!!!! Yeah! I just put it in my hardest gear and mashed it all the way to the line. Ended up in 15th place out of 50. Very stoked and happy with my results. I also did this race last year and got dropped on the first lap, so much improvement for me!
