Chris Chaput Podiums the Isles
This is a very well run race. Great course ….FLAT…and they drive on the left side there so it made it interesting on the roads.
Racing in the Cat 3/4 field, I scored second in the time trial on Saturday morning….only 40 seconds off David Z’s time, on a three mile course, HA! We had about 25 guys in our field but they decided to mix in all the other fields with us, masters, women, and a couple of older juniors so we had about 50 people for the Saturday afternoon circuit race. The circuit race was a fast, 30 mile course. We averaged 29mph. I finished in the pack, but the guy who was in 4th and about 17 seconds behind me was this meaty 20 year old and he could sprint. He ended up taking one of the intermediate sprints and the stage so with time bonuses he was just about a second off my time when it got down to the road race.
So the road race on Sunday was 70 miles of pretty flat roads and about 80 degree weather. It was kind of a weird race with the field being mixed. I was still in second place so I was worried I’d get beaten up on so I played it pretty defensively for the first half of the race and covered only what I needed to and used the masters guys as much as I could to do my work for me…suckers…Later in the race I went with a few promising moves and eventually just had to start taking some late flyers to try and get the time I would need to move up to 1st but it wasn’t happening. So the guy in 3rd took the sprint for the second time and knocked be down to 3rd. Looking back, I should have been more aggressive from the start but that’s the way it goes.