Union City Road Race

By Mitch Askew

Date: 6-22-2003
Place: Union City, GA

It was hot! The course was one of the coolest courses I have raced on. It was 90% on a four lane divided highway and we had one lane to ourselves. The inclines where perfect and fairly easy to climb. It was 5 miles out to the highway and then you did 16 mile laps and then came back into the city for the finish. The Cat 5's had an excellent group. Glenn, Ed, Tracy from Bicycle outfitters was there. Chad and Eric were there from Boneshakers, and Douglas from the Bike shop were there as well. Eric seemed to be doing great until his pedal, the entire thing, came unscrewed from his crank arm. He tried for about 5 more strokes to keep going but had to pull out. Chad seemed to be real close to his first win until his legs cramped and on the last stretch got passed by about 15 guys. Glen, Tracy, and Ed did great for their first race. Douglas from the Bike shop got 4th and was the same guy who won the 5's Racoon mtn RR by a minute. Eggy, a guy who started riding with us on the Tues nt ride, got 5 or 6 and it was his first RR!! The cat 4 field was pretty big and we did 58 miles. I felt great and worked a lot on the first lap and half. I bridged gaps, pulled the line to shell some folks, and attacked a few times. I then sat in for the remainder of the race and got the course a little mixed up and became so confused on the way back that I ended up in mid pack and then the field did that slow up thing where no one would pedal and everyone gets bunched up. This makes moving up near impossible. I finished mid pack with plenty of leg left. It was a great race. The wierdest thing was the masters 35+ that Roy from RBM was in. On the way back into the city 10 guys off of the front followed the lead motorcycle the "right way" back. But another police motorcycle got confused and ran up to the main pack at an earlier intersection and started waving them to turn in. Half the pack went straight, the last half turned due to the cop honking his horn and running his lights. The first half of the pack saw the last half turn so they all turned around to follow. So the only ones who did the real course was the first 10 in the break away. But, the rest of the field probably beat them back because of the unauthorized short cut. Who knows how the race officials will handle that result finish. Roy seemed to be in good spirits about the whole thing.