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Liquid Fitness Coaching
Go with the flow
8/10 Elite National Road Race Championship
Course: 166 km, rolling, wide open roads, mostly big ring climbs
Field: 140 Cat 1 racers from around the country
Results:
Josh Horowitz: 15th 5:17
John Tzinberg: 34 6:06
Nick Brandt: 64 7:22
This was a long (over four and a half hours) hard race in the inland heat and the fact that more than 50 riders DNFd exemplifies that. Regardless, it was an excellent day for our scaled down Liquid Fitness elite team.
With most of our riders from out of the country and thus ineligible for the US National Championships, it was just John, Nick and myself. John and Nick were active in the early moves with Nick eventually making the big break of the day. Without the fitness to hammer for 100 miles, I knew I would have to sit in, stay protected and wait for everyone else to wear out.
Sure enough, with about 20 miles to go, the break which was 30 strong at one point had whittled down to just 13 riders with most of the dropped breakaway riders coming back to the pack and then straight off the back.
With 15 km to go I was hurting pretty bad but so was everyone else. I saw a lull in the action and knew if I was going to do something in this race, this was the time. I attacked and quickly bridged across to a lone Armed Forces rider. He saw me coming, waited up and we started hauling ass. He was hurting me pretty bad but after a disastrous performance the day before getting dropped from the winning break at the FIAC National Crit championships, there was no way I was losing his wheel. At the top of the final climb, the moto came up to tell us we had a full minute on the pack. We hammered the downhill and as we turned the corner on to the uphill finish, we came along side, had a little moment to thank each other for the hard work and then drag raced to the finish. He took me by several seconds, but I was happy with the result.
Nice job to John and Nick and thanks to Rachel Tzinberg for a long day in the feed zone without a single missed feed.
