Race Reports by T. Sahl
Name: Todd Sahl
Finishing Place: 6th
Race: Olympic View State RR
Category: Senior Mens 3
Date: April 28th, 2012
Quick Report: Raced with Blackness. 90 miles, narrow roads, hard to move up. Snuck to the front on the last lap, avoided the crashes and got an opening for the sprint.
Name: Todd Sahl
Finishing Place: 6th
Race: Vance Creek RR
Category: Senior Mens 3
Date: May 5th, 2012
Quick Report: Raced with TMT, Niels, Ryan. 80 miles. First lap crash took out Niels and Ryan. Cold and wet. Break stayed away most of the day, brought back by an extremely fast lap with 2 to go. Long uphill finish into the wind, poker match until the last 150 meters. Sprinted through the much reduced pack to 6th. TMT was 9th.
Name: Todd Sahl
Finishing Place: 10th TT, 8th GC
Race: Mutual of Enumclaw Stage Race
Category: Senior Mens 3
Date: May 19-20, 2012
Quick Report: Raced alone. Saturday morning TT was dry and sunny. New TT bike, first ride, 10th in TT. Saturday evening crit was dry, fast and hard to move up with all the corners; pack finish. Sunday afternoon road race was 72 miles, five times up Mud Mtn Dam. Shitting rain. Finished in reduced lead group with a couple mutant Canadian guys off the front. Big GC shuffle with lots of guys in the top ten not making the lead group on the climb. Worked hard with Jason Cemanski from Apex on the last lap to limit time to the break, which saved our GC placings with respect to all but the winner. Ended up 8th.
Here’s the blow-by-blow for the 3’s race in Enumclawthis past weekend:
Saturday:
10:00 am 10k TT, flattish with a few turns. Literally the first ride on the new TT bike, with a borrowed disk from Niels and a front wheel from Jason. Jason was coaching us like a parent at the start! Was gasping for air most of the almost 14 minutes. 13:50 was good enough for 10th place, with 9th thru 6th less than 5 seconds ahead of me. Apex guys were in first and third with Todd Baumeister and Jason Cemanski. Baumeister is a giant dude and would not end up holding on in the RR.
7:50 pm 40 minute crit. 40 minutes of fighting for position on an 8-corner course. A few crashes but nothing compared to the 2010 crit in the pouring rain. I tried to move up at the end but could only manage 21st. Young guys did well including Conor Klupar and Thorsten Askervold, but Matt Mikul of Recycled took the win, he is now headed for the 2s. No big GC changes but the dude in 2nd lost some time and dropped down a few places.
Sunday:
1:00 pm road race, raining but not super cold. 72 miles, 5 laps up Mud Mtn Dam climb. In 2010 I was gapped at the top of that climb when it mattered. This year not so much. Maybe the 105,000 feet of climbing for the Strava challenge in April helped? It was satifsying to see guys explode on the climb, I’ve been on the other side of that before. Last lap the lead group was down to less than 20 guys with 3 Canadians off the front, all out of sight. One would end up winning by 1:42 and take the GC. The other two we brought back to nine seconds by the finish. Baumeister was dropped as were a couple other guys that started the day ahead of me on GC. I worked hard with Recycled’s Rob McDaniel and Apex’s Jason Cemanski all the way to the finish to keep the Canadians from leapfrogging us on GC. Everyone else seemed to sprint a bit better for the line, with Brian Urakawa taking the sprint for 4th. Finshed up 8th overall, a big improvement on the 24th I managed two years ago.
– chainsaw