Cherry Point RR - Photo Finish

A wet but luckily not cold day... Derek Tripp was pushing the pace all day to try and catch Dave Mercer and Ray Morrison (over sixty group) for the overall race...

Ray Waggoner took my advice and got off the front on the long backside climb with one and a half laps to go. And managed to stay away.

The rest our 50-59 group was down to about five people (and I think an over 60 who grabbed our wheels when we caught up with them.) Two young guys (Shane Savage and someone else) caught us with one lap to go. We simply couldn't stay on their wheel as we went up the long backside climbs.

That trimmed our group down to three, Derek Tripp, Bill Yearwood and myself. Bill lead us into the finish followed by myself and Derek. I jumped with about 300m to go. Probably a bit early as there is a little rise there... Derek managed to get around on the outside for a win by about a half a wheel... Bill and I where within about a half a tire width... Consensus was that I was second and Bill third. Could have gone either way.

The sprint climb was the hard part of this course. 420m, 30m of climbing. Average 6.6% grade, but actually a bit steeper at the bottom and top... We where averaging about 1:05 seconds, about 380 watts average.

Ergomo had a problem, the CPU stopped recording altitude properly after we went through a heavy rain shower in lap four and five. Hopefully it will be ok after it dries out.

Thanks to Duane Martindale for the photos...