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Douro Race Report

Wednesday, August, 20 2008

A good showing from the Project Freeride team for this event – Cary, Matt, John and Andy for the road race and Cary, Andrew & Andy for the ITT. 

Road Race:

When we drove in that morning, the weather was very overcast and a little cool.  As the day progressed, the sun came out and it was nice temperature for racing.  The race rolled out at a fairly pedestrian pace but it wasn’t long before attacks started going off the front and things really picked up.  Cary made two valiant efforts to get off the front – one in which he tried to bridge to a sizeable break already forming.  He was ultimately denied and came back to hang out with the rest of the team.  Two breaks eventually got away and quickly formed into one big group which continued to take time out of a fairly disorganized peloton.  The 3 podium riders (all pros) later broke free of this group and finished 3 minutes ahead of the peloton.  Back in the bunch each of the Project Freeride guys spent some time at the front but most of the riders seemed to have decided that the break was not coming back and so they were unwilling to work.  All further attempts to get off the front were somewhat half hearted and quickly squashed.  Periodically we’d pass a rider, shelled from the hard working break and looking busted.  In the final lap the 2^nd breakaway almost came back which made for a fast finish and the peloton coming in only 5 seconds behind the break.  Project Freeride showed well towards the end with Cary taking big pulls on the front and Matt, John and Andy all placing in the front 10 positions from the peloton sprint.  While it didn’t land any of us on the podium, it was nice to have a good team showing at an open race so we could all race together. 

 

ITT:

The TT day was beautifully sunny but as our start times approached it was turning into quite a windy day.  The course was an out and back with the wind being essentially a tail wind out and a head wind on the way back.  After missing his start time and losing a minute, Andy still placed 11^th for Master 2.  Cary and Andrew placed 9^th and 13^th respectively in the Master 1 field.  A quick comparison with the road race results would show that many of the riders finishing ahead of us in the TT had not raced the day before.