From: kjm@sactoh0.sac.ca.us (Kevin J. Metcalfe)
Subject: Madera stage race
Reply-To: kjm@sactoh0.SAC.CA.US (Kevin J. Metcalfe)
Organization: Sacramento Public Access Unix, Sacramento, Ca.
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 16:03:55 GMT

The Madera County Stage race was held Friday through Sunday April
10-12.  The race was made a little more difficult by the
participation of the whole Spago pro squad (about 12 riders) and
a new team still forming with these riders: Matt Newberry, Todd
Golgulski, Greg McNeil, Gary Mulder and a few others.

Stage One:  The Ben Hur Time Trial.  This stage is a 10 mile
uphill time trial.  The first 6 miles is rolling and gradually
uphill, followed by a steady climb of about 3 miles.  The last
mile is once again rolling uphill.  The total vertical gain is
approximately 1500 feet.  The equipment setup of the day was
"fred" bars and light, but aero wheels.  A few people used light
disks, tri-spokes and J-Disks(probably the hot tip), and one
person even used a funny bike (BIG mistake). I personally used a
16 spoke front Roval wheel and a standard 8-speed 32 spoke rear
wheel.  Peter Davis of the Spago team won with a time of
approximately 30:15. Nathan Dalhberg (NZ) also of Spago was
second. Other highly placed riders included Greg McNeil, Paul
Brinkley-Rogers (Trek-Edgebar), Chad Gerlack (Team City), and
Scott McKinley (Spago).  Also racing were Sally Zack of Shaklee
and Inga Thompson of Kahlua.  I placed 40th with a painfully slow
32:59.  As a side note, I last did this race in 1988 and placed
3rd in this stage behind Mike Engleman and Steve Larson with a
slightly slower time.  I think that times were faster because the
conditions were excellent and the "fred" bars were quite a bit of
help during the first 6 miles.  The field was also fairly deep
with talent.

Stage two:  Ranchos time trial.  This was a 13 mile test over
flat but fairly bumpy farm roads.  The race was run in inverse
order of GC.  I used the Roval front wheel, "fred" bars and a
rear disk.  When I finished I was in second place behind Tim
Noakes with a time of 29:24.  Unfortunately, that didn't last too
long.  Eric Zaltas of Shacklee riding a double disk funny bike
finished in about 28:50.  That held for a while until Scott
McKinley blazed across the line in 28:13.  This looked like the
winning time until Peter Davis came across the line in 28:11 to
nip Scott and take his second stage in as many tries.  I talked
to Nathan Dalhberg at the evening crit and he explained that he
lost the stage by 41 seconds, but didn't get a disk (apparently
it was first come first serve at the Spago disk dispenser).  He
estimated that at 2 seconds per km for 21 km would have possibly
put him into first by 1 second.  It certainly would have been
interesting.  Other top finishers were Paul Brinkley-Rogers, and
Chad Gerlack.  My final placing was 14th, again somewhat
disappointing. 

Stage three:  Madera Crit.  This was your standard 4 corner 30
mile criterium with no primes.  Since Sunday's Stage 4 was an 83
mile road race nobody was too keen on hammering themselves this
afternoon.  There were a few half hearted attempts to break away
but nobody got more than 5-10 seconds ahead.  In the end the
Spago choo-choo did it's thing and they claimed 1st, 2nd, 4th,
and 5th.  Scott McKinley who was leading his brother John out won
the stage.  John apparently didn't know he was being led out and
jumped with 400 meters to go so Scott sprinted for himself and
John held on for second.  Inga, and Sally had no real trouble
finishing in the middle of the pack.

Stage four:  Raymond Road Race.  The Raymond road race is
contested on a rolling 9.5 mile loop on narrow country roads. 
The Sr 1,2 Pro's rode 9 laps for approximately 83 miles.  The
only hill of substance was the feed hill which climbed for
approximately .5 miles and wasn't really all that steep.  The
course was always going up or down though and the total climbing
based on measurements from my _accurate_the_millimeter_ Avocet 50
was about 5600 feet.  On the second lap a break went away with
Paul Brinkley-Rogers, Nathan Dahlberg, a Swiss Spago rider, Greg
McNeil and about 5 others.  If this group stayed away Spago would
still get 1st and 2nd on GC so the pack was pretty controlled at
this point.  After a couple of laps my legs were starting to feel
numb and I along with a few other riders started doing the
"drift" on the feed hill.  The "drift" entails starting a climb
at the front of the pack and riding a fairly comfortable tempo
while slowly drifting towards the back of the pack.  This in an
invaluable method for saving energy even when you are feeling
good.  As a side note this method doesn't work well in women's
races where fields are sometimes smaller than 20 riders.  After
about 3 laps the field started splitting on the feed hill.  The
split was pretty small and was easily closed.  This went on for
about 2 laps until on about the 6th lap when the field split
nobody tried to close the gap.  It could have easily been done
but nobody wanted to work.  We were a pretty beat up group. 
There were still about 7 Spago riders in the group and they
started riding tempo at the front.  The general consensus was
"Yeah, make the pros earn their money."  What they did was ride
team time trial style at the front until the feed hill where they
launched Peter Davis, Rodrigo Alcala, another Spago rider, Todd
Golgulski and someone else.  This put about 20 or more riders up
the road and we became the "bus"/"laughing group"/"gruppetto".  
Nathan Dalhberg won the stage in a group of about 5 riders with a
group of about 25 following in 5 seconds later.  The top 5 or 10
remained unchanged.  Peter Davis announced his retirement before
the final stage and fittingly won the overall in his last race. 
For a while I felt pretty bad for him as the breakaways were
approximately 3 minutes up the road and I figured he was hosed. 
But Spago launched him and he made it into the second group and
lost only about 5 seconds.

     Sally Zack and Inga eventually got dropped but I saw Sally
in the final group as late as lap 6 or 7 and they both finished. 
Only 66 people finished the race.  After climbing into 24th place
after the TT and crit I dropped to 32nd after the road race. 
Pretty lame results but hopefully lots of good training since
next week is the district RR.  AHHHHH!

     I am posting this world wide.  If anybody objects to that
let me know and I will narrow the scope of future posts
accordingly.

Later

Kevin
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