Category: Elite 5
Justin Hall
Finishing position: 1/50
Teammates: Rod Fernandez, Mark Hockridge, Bob Blythe, Darin Salk, Scott
Wong
Course description: We all know it J
About two weeks ago Rod sent out a note to our teammates listed above nominating me to be “the guy” the team works for to get a win in today’s race. Scott and Bob, two guys I had never met (or if I had, as the newbie, didn’t remember being overwhelmed with new faces) enthusiastically agreed. Mark and Darin, guys I had already had the privilege of getting to know, were equally enthusiastic – as obviously my friend Rod was as well. I have no idea how many pro starts I have racing cars – far and away enough that I am no longer nervous, but for some reason I had pre race jitters – everything to do with pressure to perform for guys willing to sacrifice their own race to help their teammate win. Teammates who are willing to do that are special, and there is absolutely pressure to reward them for their sacrifice…..
With that said, I responded with a framework of how I thought we should approach the race based upon the learnings from Land Park and Folsom Crits. Here’s a huge upside for racing with DBC. I met a couple of my new teammates for the first time at Cherry Pie Crit, we lined up and said we would race as a team, but ultimately we raced as individuals, because we didn’t know what we were doing. At Land Park and Folsom, I got a taste of how things should be done and also how they can fall apart based upon mentoring from our more senior guys – huge DBC upside.
Basically, the plan was for me to ride at the front so as not to suffer from the accordion effect through the turns, and if I saw a break with legs I would hang with it, but mostly just stay up front but do no work. For some reason at the start I couldn’t clip in, I think it had to do with the shoe cover, but I found myself DFL almost out of the gate. I spent the first three laps dive bombing corners to make up positions and work my way up front. There were no primes, no organized attacks, frankly it was pretty easy to hold station anywhere from p3-p10. Throughout this time my teammates would rotate up to make sure I was covered and ok, it seemed like Mark and Darin were literally ALWAYS around.
With maybe 7 to go the pace picked up a bit. By design, at this point Scott came up and started drilling the front. Given the nature of this course we wanted the pack strung out so ultimately I would only have to sprint against 2-3 others vs. 10 others. This was probably Scott’s third long pull at the front, and as he rotated off Bob came up with his huge motor and pulled hard for a couple more laps. As perfectly as you could plan as we passed s/f I found myself on Rod’s wheel. Rod pulled huge through both left handers, an incredible effort, leaving me right where I wanted to be on the backside of the course.
Just as Rod started fading a rider in neutral gear started his sprint at BASKIN ROBBINS (!!!???) in an all or nothing play – I left Rod’s wheel and jumped on this guy and was 5-10m off rounding the last left hander when his tire blew at the apex!!! This rider did an awesome job of maintaining control of his bike slowing to the curb near Starbucks. Unfortunately I had to slightly check up slightly because I wasn’t sure if I was going to hit him or not, then regain my momentum for the sprint to s/f. I was able to hang on with ½ a bike length over p2 and secure the victory for DBC. It happens to be my name on the result, but Rod, Bob, Mark, Scott, Darin, and Justin won the race. Truly a team effort!!!!
In addition to the teammates listed above I’d also like to give a shout out to Fred Schnaars and Alan Rowland for their coaching and support. I guess I am going to upgrade now.
Justin
SRM Race Data:
Duration: 30:18
Work: 491 kJ
TSS: 53.1 (intensity factor 1.025)
Norm Power: 287
Distance: 12.799 mi
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 1051 270 watts
Heart Rate: 140 201 181 bpm
Cadence: 29 155 97 rpm
Speed: 16.4 34.3 25.3 mph
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