Kjellquist Blog

The second road race of the season started cool (45 degrees) but dry. This was my first time on the tubular Zipp 404’s that I bought over the winter. I am a believer in tubulars and deep dish wheels.

The Kirkwood course is the standard road race course for Lancaster county; mostly rolling hills with a handful of short sharp power hills. We rode 3 laps of 7 miles each. In the 50+ race we had 22 starters including a couple of women.

After warming up on the trainer, I got to stand around while the race started about 15 minutes late. The 40+ race got off and we were 2 minutes behind with the cat 4 race 2 minutes behind us.

Standing at the line, Kev (our team leader) asked if I had warmed up ok. He said he really didn’t have time for a good warm and asked that I try to control things early in the race. I started from the front row and within the first 1/2 mile the attacks started. For the next 10 miles, I was chasing and attacking almost anything that moved. Midway through lap 2, a 2-up break did manage to stick while I was in rear of the field recovering. At the end of lap 2, I lost contact on the power hills leading into the S/F. For the next couple of miles, I hung on just off the field and finally caught back in the middle of lap 3.

While I was chasing off the back, a chase group formed on the front and caught the break going into the finish.

The cat 4 field caught us (just as last week) with about a mile to go.

We got our first win of the season with Jay taking the sprint from Bob Kehl. Chip Berezny got 3rd. The rest of our team was Peter (10th), me (13th), Dave N (14th), Kevin (16th) and Bruce P (19th).

Overall, I’m happy with the my race. I worked very hard and hopefully kept the race fast reducing the sprinter advantages. At 13th, I get a couple of BAR points for myself.

In the other races of the day, we took 7th (Joe), 12th (Kevin S) and 16th (Bill) in the 40+ race and 39th (Marcus) in the cat 4.