We are back after a very successful race in Kentucky. If you haven’t yet heard Jacob won the race giving him an automatic spot on the worlds team.
The race was held in the Red River George of eastern Kentucky, on a rolling course. The area was beautiful with all the rolling hills, creeks and jungle like forest. We stayed in a cool cabin way up in the hills, 30 minutes from the closest grocery store. It was a great place and perfect spot for a hard bike race.
The day after we arrived we had the chance to go and do a longer ride and start getting use to the humidity and hot weather, which we haven’t been having in Oregon. Our rides the two days prior were great, we saw some of the course and had some good team bonding and even got chased by some dogs.
The 69 mile race started at ten am after a short delay because of some morning fog. Fifty-nine of the nations top riders where at the race and CMG was ready to show them our strength. The first forty miles were fairly uneventful, a few riders got of the front here and there, but for the most part the field stayed together. Then after a long decent two riders just kind of rolled off the front, they were soon joined by two other riders one being Jacob. With around twenty miles the go the group off the front containing Jacob had around forty-five seconds. It was a hard finishing twenty miles containing two of the harder climbs and a long hard rolling section, however the group had some good horse power with; Jacob Rathe, Nathan Brown (last years national champion), Andrew Barker, and Adam Lebowitz (who won the TT the day before). With such a strong group up the road the gap quickly opened up to over a minute.
When the leading group hit the second to last climb of the day they dropped Leibovitz but carried on strong. Back in the field things started heating up as everyone knew that the climbs would be decisive. On the final climb of the day Jacob and Andrew dropped Nathan and were left with just the two of them for a hard eight miles still to the finish. In the field things started breaking up, and by the time they reached the top of the hill Ian was in a group of six while Austin and Marcel were in a group of seven just twenty seconds behind.
As Jacob and Andrew kept driving on towards the finish things behind began to get more tactical as everyone was wanting to save up for the finish. The group containing Austin and Marcel rejoined Ian’s group and the group was about fourteen riders going down the last decent before the flat finish. Meanwhile while all this was happening behind Jacob and Andrew were holding their lead and realized that one of them was going to win the race and go to worlds. As we all know Jacob is one of the fastest finishers around so Andrew tried to get away before the finish but Jacob was right on his wheel.
Just like every good story ends this one was no different, Jacob won the sprint and won the race, while Austin and Ian took 6th and 7th in the chase group which finished a minute behind their teammate and winner of the race. Marcel had a bad day with lady luck and had a flat on the final decent with three miles to go. There was no car to give him a wheel, but if there was it was sure that CMG would have had four out of the top ten spots.
It was great to see all four of us juniors racing at the front of the race with the best kids in the nation. CMG was by far the best team as far as having three riders in the top seven and knowing that Marcel would have finished well had he not flatted.
Next on the schedule is Elkhorn stage race over in Baker City, OR this Friday and there is not break after that either. Marcel and Austin will be leaving after a 112 mile road race on Sunday and driving to Boise for a week long USCF junior regional camp. Jacob will most likely be leaving sometime shortly after the race for Europe with the National team in preparation for worlds in South Africa in mid July.
We have been having a great time and are all enjoying the atmosphere within the team and would like the say thank you to all the people who made this happen and have given us the chance to race our bikes and special thanks to; Butch Martin for getting us all on this team and teaching us how to win races, the Swans (moms and dads who plan the trips and do everything for the riders from cooking great food to washing clothes and bottles after the race and everything else which makes it a lot easier for us to win the race), we would also like to thank all the team sponsors for their help and support .
http://cmg-racing.com/blog/sponsors/
Thanks for reading and we will keep you updated
CMG juniors
that is Andrew Barker in the picture with the tunnel behind him that we went through in the race.
