Matt Ragan (pictured on left)
March 24th & 25th held in store a visit to "Chicken City", Gainesville, Georgia. This was Georgia Cup #2. Two riders did the entire stage race and 5 others did one or more. Matt Ragan was the sole rider from CBR to take on the massive competitive class (cat 4/5 combined). In only his second road race weekend, Matt scored a top 10 overall. Matt was 10th for the weekend in a field of over 85. Matt's performance raised him to 12th in the on-going race series. He had top 20's in both the Time trail and the RR. The road course was built around it's climbs. The course had three climbs, two of which were KOM (King of the Mountain) climbs. They were scored each lap. Matt earned KOM points on both climbs in 3 out of his 6 laps. Too much time at the front took its toll and Matt fell back near the last lap. He was still able to stay with the lead pack, but lacked his normal explosive power on the finish. Matt ended the race in 17th. All in all, a great weekend for our eager cat 5 racer. I also did the entire weekend and had a good Time trial with a 9th place finish. My time was decent, but not quite what I had hoped for. The Road race for the Master's was raced by "Big" Dan Duval, Darren Sorrells and Steve Murray. We all finished, but slightly behind the main group. We were all pleased to complete the 8 trips up the 1.5K climb. At 9% grade, it really hurt more each successive lap.
The crit was on a standard four corner course. It had two long sections and was really fast. The master's crit was raced by Scott Matty, Steve Dozier, Glenn Kalnins, Darren Sorrells, and Steve Murray. The race announcer was a sadist. He called prime after prime which caused the field's speed to stay very high -with almost no time to recover. The constant barrage of accelerations took their toll on our old crew. With about 10 minutes to go, there was just Scott Matty and myself left from the CBR team. The field had also reduced by at least half of its' original number by the end. Scott was a monster on the bike as always. With about three laps to go, Scott pulled the field up to an 8 man break that surely would have stayed away without his effort. I faded a little in the last couple of laps(maybe from trying to stay in when Scott chased the break-away group). I managed to stay on the pack, but lost a good finishing position. The crit ended with Scott scoring 13th and me in 20th. The average speed for the crit was around 26.3 mph.
Matt's crit was also fast, but throw in 90 "hot dogs" all trying to win the race every lap. The field was large and sketchy at times. If you've never raced a crit - fast and sketchy is a tough combination to race in. When all was said and done, Matt finished mid pack and gained more experience racing in close quarters.
All in all - it was a fine weekend of racing. No one got hurt, everyone picked up some good training time and the sun was shining!
