Savannah Georgia Cup

The GA Cup races this weekend in Savannah were very flat and very fast. Racing from Macon were Trey Gavin, Jeff Clayton, Chad Madan, myself, and Richard Cook.

The Saturday morning Team Time Trial was the toughest of the three stages for me. Trey and I formed a two-man team (the minimum for Competitive division). It was a flat 14-mi course with a few small inclines and a light breeze on half of the route. We started out too fast with too much adrenaline, I think, and had to struggle to keep up the pace at the finish. But all in all we had a good TTT, passing the groups that started 1 minute and 2 minutes ahead of us, both of which were 3-man teams. Our average speed was 24.3 mph. It would have been very beneficial to have had one or two additional teammates. The draft effect would have been larger and it would have provided a critical extra few seconds for catching our breath between pulls. But it was a fun ride. We finished 11th of 20 teams and beat all the 2-man, 3-man, and 4-man teams. A GA Cup screw-up on the web site caused Jeff to miss his TTT start. Richard was paired with another single and had a good ride. I think Chad's team took 4th.

The Saturday afternoon 'crit' was hot. They called it a crit, but really it was a short, half-moon shaped circuit race with two open, wide turns. Trey and I both stayed with the front group in a race that was very fast by cat 4/5 standards (25.8 mph). I moved up to the front a couple of times, but didn't have enough juice to try anything. Trey raced aggressively and stayed up front a lot. He took 2nd in a time bonus prime and finished top 20 in the sprint. I was probably at about 30th. I didn't realize until after the race that they didn't give the same time to everyone finishing together in the final group, so I lost a few seconds there. Jeff raced well but finished mid-pack in his race, and I think Chad finished mid-pack after doing quite a bit of up-front work for Pacesetter earlier in the race.

The Sunday circuit race was on a wide, fast mini-Indy car track with about 7 turns. It was another very fast race (25.7 mph) with wide open turns and some breeze. It finished similarly to the crit for Trey and I, but included much more carnage. At least four crashes occurred during the race, with one guy breaking his collar bone, I think. Lots of scraping aluminum and cracking carbon (road rash makes no sound). Jeff covered all the breaks in his race, but none of them stuck. He finished mid-pack in the sprint.

I guess you can see that the theme down there was fast, open, sprinter's races. The TTT pretty much set the finishing order in the GC, and we don't have many sprinters from Macon, so we didn't bring home any hardware, but it was a fun weekend. Dahlonega in two weeks will see an entirely different list of names on the leaderboard.