Johnson City Omnium 2018
After a few days of easy rides and another 1,000+ miles of driving, I arrived in Tennessee for another weekend of racing. The road race started early Saturday morning, and the talk of the day (and the weekend) was, Rain or no rain? – That is the question.
When we pulled into the parking lot at 8:00AM, rain pelted down from the sky and there was thunder rumbling in the distance – does that answer your question? The rain let up long enough just so that I could run over to registration without getting soaked, but then it all came pouring down again as I crammed in to my car, preparing everything I needed for the race.
Thankfully, the rain turned to a sprinkle by the time we lined up for the start, but that didn’t last very long. No more than five miles in, God was crying again. It was a steady sob, like when you see a video of a solider surprising his son at Graduation, but nothing too crazy.
The roads were already soaked, but I (and most of the field) had opted for dark lenses in anticipation of the sun peeking out of the clouds later in the day – I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. So I took my sunglasses off and placed them over the back of my helmet.
I quickly realized that the painful spray from the road was much worse than trying to see through the fog of my lenses. So I put my sunglasses back on, but this time with a different technique; I put the bridge of the glasses on the very tip of my nose, like a grandpa trying to read the newspaper. This way, I could see – actually see! – over the top of my dark lenses, and having the lenses in front of my face would still block the spray from the road.
I didn’t look like an idiot for too long; 30 miles in, the rain stopped, and the sun came out, kind of. It was still cloudy and the roads were soaking wet, but at least we weren’t riding through a thunderstorm anymore.
Amidst all the confusion – or at least my own panic that results from racing in the rain – a solo rider had gone off the front. He attacked early and got out of sight fast. In fact, we wouldn’t see him again until after the finish line…
Our road race consisted of two ~28-mile loops followed by a long section of highway leading to the base of the Roan Mountain, a 7.5-mile Cat 1 climb to the finish. Here is the link to my Strava ride that day: https://www.strava.com/activities/1612907665
I sat in as much as I could until we reached the base of the final climb. At the time, I had no idea we were racing for 2nd. We were given a time gap for the entire race – neither did the solo breakaway rider; I felt bad for him – so I thought I was racing for the win. Either way, we hit the bottom of the climb with about 40 guys left, and I prepared myself for the suffering that lie ahead…
The Final Climb
Sean Gardner from the Gateway Harley-Davidson Development Team is a beast. I’ve been racing against him for a couple of years now, and he has almost always gotten the better of me. If it was a time trial, he would beat me by 10 seconds. If it was a mountaintop finish, he would get 3rd and I would be 5th. If it was a crit… well, it depends. But in truth, I had never beaten him on a mountaintop finish before – he was the man to watch.
We hit the bottom of the climb, and low and behold, Sean was on the front. He set a fierce tempo, reducing the field from 40 to 10 in just a couple of minutes. I was right there, on his wheel or just a few guys back, waiting. I could see that guys were starting to suffer. Sean was on the front, murdering his rivals with each pedal stroke, and getting out of the saddle every once in a while just to inflict a little more pain into his victims.
By the time I looked back, there were only eight guys left. I was feeling good, and I could see that the other guys were not. I had never been in this position before – I was one of the strongest guys in the group, and now I was witnessing the suffering of others. They bounced, bobbed, and weaved on their bikes. Their faces were etched with pain, sweat dripping down from their forehead onto their glasses, drool coming out of their mouth. One more acceleration would break them – I had been in their position so many times before, that’s how I knew.
With Sean still driving on the front, I came up the right side and attacked. It was nothing crazy, just enough to whittle down the group. My attack didn’t do much – it only dropped one or two guys – so I sat up, and saved some energy. We still had a long way to go.
We rotated in a group of five for the next 10 minutes, and then the attacks started to come. Sean was the first to go, but he was quickly brought back and countered by another rider. I closed the gap and immediately went to the front. Gaps were starting to open up, and I sensed that the breaking point was near. What I did next was very risky: I attacked three times in a row.
I attacked once, got brought back, and attacked again. This time the gap was a little larger, and it took them a little longer to close it. Instinct took over, and after taking a 10-second breather, I attacked again, this one the hardest of them all. I kept going and didn’t look back for more than 30 seconds. I wanted to win, and now I was going all-in. I wasn’t surprised when I saw Sean coming back to my wheel. He is super strong, and I expected him to be there. But now, it was just the two of us. I started thinking about the sprint, and how sad/hilarious/uncomfortable it would be to witness us – two skinny climbers who can’t hit a 1000 Watts – sprinting for the win (or 2nd, but I didn’t know that). We traded pulls for a few minutes, and then, at just over 1k to go, we hit a steep section on a turn and I attacked. I went all-in – even more all-in than before, if that’s even possible – and when I looked back, I had a gap. And when I looked back again, the gap was bigger. By the third check, I realized that the gap was growing. I had good legs, and I was going to win! (Almost…)
It’s been fun battling with Sean over the years, and he got me back a few hours later, so no hard feelings.
I was on the high of my life when I crossed the line. It lasted for about 20 seconds, until someone told me that the early break survived, and I got 2nd. That took the wind out of my sails, but I was still really happy.
There wasn’t much time to celebrate, as the time trial was just five hours later. It’s a short course going up and over a two-minute climb, followed by a fast descent and a three-minute false flat to the finish. Here is the Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/1617588694
Short TTs aren’t my thing, but I had gotten 3rd on this course in 2016, so my confidence was high.
Time Trial
I nailed my warm-up, topped off on my nutrition, and headed to the line with a few minutes to spare. My legs felt ‘OK’ – a pleasant surprise considering the 4-hour RR that morning – but I didn’t feel very fast. There was a head/crosswind on most of the course this year, so even though my time was slow, I was hoping everyone else’s would be too. Sean won the TT, and I finished 3rd, six seconds behind him. Based on the omnium scoring system, I had the lead going into the crit. Yay…?
Downtown Crit
I wore a leader’s jersey for the first time in my life. It was really cool – getting called up to the start line, being interviewed after the race (full interview here à http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/sports-cycling/2018/06/02/Ward-tops-Roan-Groan-field.html), getting lots of attention form the race announcer – but it also sucked.
I was the most heavily-marked rider on the planet. Everyone looked at me to do everything. If someone attacked, I was the only one that was going to chase. I decided which breaks would go, and which breaks would be pulled back. So I did a lot of work, and somehow ended up in the ‘break of the day’ 20 minutes into the race. I was marking the rider in 3rd place overall who had won the RR, and we ended up forming a break with two others that lasted almost 45 minutes.
While the bike-racer in me says that this was a dumb move – I should’ve been saving energy by sitting in the field, not wasting it by going off the front in attacks – the Johnson City Crit is a really unique course that makes riding in a break easier than riding in the field. At least for me. The course snakes through Downtown Johnson City, and has 8 corners in less than a kilometer. It’s probably the most technical crit, I’ve ever done, which means a lot of coasting and over 500 turns in our 90-minute race. Here is the link to the Crit: https://www.strava.com/activities/1617580298
And here is a video recap of the race from the winner (Spoiler alert: not me), Winston David: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE5I9Q5Exj0&feature=youtu.be
[You can see my skinny legs and orange shoes at 0:18, 6:00, 7:10, 10:18, and 10:38]
By the time we got caught, we only had 25 minutes left and the field was down to 20. I knew the attacks were coming, and I was hoping/trying to let a group go that contained non-GC riders, so that they could fight it out for the stage win while I would mark the guys gunning for the Overall. But it wasn’t meant to be.
Just a few minutes later, a group of GC riders attacked. I chased them down, but it took a lot out of me. When one of them countered, I let it go. Just a half-lap later, another GC guy attacked, and this one I had to mark. It took me an entire lap to close the gap, and then, just as I got on his wheel, he attacked again. I stood up to accelerate, but I had nothing left. I looked over my shoulder, hoping someone else would chase. No luck. With 5 laps the go, the break was gone, and we were racing for 7th. I knew how important every single point was in the Overall Omnium, so I had to go all-in on the field sprint, something that I never do. I gave it everything I could on the last lap, bombing the corners, pretending I didn’t have brakes, and sprinting as hard as I could all the way to the line. I finished 11th, and held on to 3rd Overall by a single point.
What a day, what a race, and what a trip.
3,000 miles of driving, 50+ hours in the car, and 320 miles of racing over 10 days – it was an experience I will never forget.
Next up: Tour of America’s Dairyland