Even climbers can win a Bear Jersey

By nature, I am a climber and had largely given up on the idea of winning a bear jersey at the SCNCA District Road Race Champioship in Bakersfield because the course has only relatively short climbs and the sprinters/power climbers tend to win on the last 600 yard power climb. For two years in a row, I was in the lead on that little power climb and finished 4th and 3rd behind the power climber/sprinters in my 60+ age division.

With some key advice from my coach (Ron Peterson), it became clear that I needed to break from the crowd at some point this year.   So about 1/3 of the way up the first climb on the second of two laps with about 17 miles to go, I hit it hard.   I looked back after 10 seconds and saw no one responding so I hit it again and continued to accelerate.  I got several hundred yards on the crowd over the top of the climb.  One guy made a run at me before the turnaround, which was fortunate, because we agreed to work together.  Really worked well as we held about a quarter mile lead until just before the final power climb when 3 or 4 of the sprinter types had closed the gap to 20 seconds or so.