2010 Sterling Classic Road Race

I'm really not sure where to start on this one, except to say that conditions for this race would have made epic cyclocross conditions... wind, torrential rain, hail, thunder and lightning and a very motivated field on the 1st lap. I've been having a bit of a weird season, unable to really be consistent with my training, I was really just hoping to hold on for a bit of the Cat 4 race at Sterling and get some quality racing in... This was not to be!
Race morning greeted 6 Comp Racers with totally craptastic weather. Tim C and Stephen P were toeing the line in the Cat 5 35+ field. They would go off first and see some pretty crushing weather, ultimately, both finishing with Stephen showing the colors for a 5th place!
Next up was the Cat 4 crew of Ken "I crush crits" Thoman, Scott "Hairy legs" Wilson, Patrick "wasn't I just in the keys last weekend" Smith and yours truly, Kurt "Iron-Muppet" Maw. With a brief "warm-up" we headed over to the line. The race rolls out in a light mist about 50 degrees. We roll thru the neutral roll out and you can feel the nervousness... Twitchy brakes, rain and slippery roads. We hit the first climb and no one really crushes it and the pack mostly holds together, hitting the longer shallower climb and things start stringing out, we take the right turn into the first downhill section and it starts raining, hard... and then, the heavens opened with a clap of thunder it felt like we were all trying to drink out of a firehouse turned on at full blast! We were now rolling along at 35+ MPH through the rolling section of the course, doing the one eye open, blink the other to clear the dirt trick and as we approach route 12 we start to gain on the pace car, which from reports couldn't go any faster because they couldn't see either... The race goes bananas, some people up the road, some guy crashing right behind me, through the lake at the corner onto Rt12 and that's where my legs would fail me... I bridged up to a small group, Patrick jumped in front of me, I struggled to hold his wheel, then Ken and someone else flew past me, no luck, I lost the wheels. Jumped on a few more and while I knew there were guys still behind me, I was cooked... I road the rest of the lap waiting for people to come up to me and nothing. So off I went, riding, leaping up here and there between the stragglers of the 45+ and 35+ fields. As the day would come to an end, I would find out that of our 89 starters, only 54 would finish.. yes, I was 54th, Patrick was 48th, Ken would drop out due to hypothermia and the pure chaos of the race and somehow Scott got nixed from the results... Either way it was a day that builds character and one that won't soon be forgotten...

And a few pics...