The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Blair Berbert on the Tour of Walkersville

by David Kirkpatrick, Features Editor

Of the many things that more experienced and successful racers have to teach, pre-race mental preparation and post-race analysis are two of the less appreciated aspects.  As an experiment, GamJams will periodically solicit a pre- and post-race analysis from members of the peloton who we wish we had more chances to learn from.  The pre-race portion is written and sealed prior to racing.  After the race, the subject will debrief the race and compare the events and outcomes to his or her predictions and prognostications. 

Coming off an excellent third place at Jeff Cup, Blair Berbert from Kelly Benefits Strategies/LSV Amateur Racing takes us behind the curtain for the Good, Bad and Ugly of the KBS/LSV approach to and execution of the 2010 Tour of Walkersville. 

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Tour of Walkersville
by Blair Berbert

Pre-Race Forecast

Walkersville tends to play out a little differently than Jeff Cup. For one, the season is officially underway and it always seems like there are fewer start-of-the-season jitters as the pack rolls out. Also though, the course and the size of the field come into play. The most decisive feature of the Walkersville course can be the wind. 2009 saw very strong winds coming across the course, being especially tough in the section immediately after the feed hill, where riders were being shoved pretty hard into the right gutter (which ultimately caused several crashes). The weather can't always be counted on to deliver the wind, however, so the most consistent course feature would have to be the yellow line, which comes especially as a shock after having the whole road to move around on at Jeff Cup. Walkersville does have a smaller field limit than Jeff Cup, but the yellow line still makes positioning extremely important. Being 20 guys back at Walkersville is a very different situation than being 20 back at Jeff Cup, and the former position won't really allow you to race when the moves start going.

The race will generally play out as most MABRA races will - tending towards a lot of attacks until a solid move gets up the road. Whether or not that move sticks is going to be primarily up to the mood of the riders in the pack and the team dynamics in the break. Roughly speaking, the big teams (NCVC, Haymarket, Harley, Kelly Benefits) will all try and stack any good move that goes. Similarly, once riders from those squads find themselves in a move, they may be reluctant to work unless the odds are very much in their favor. This can have the side effect of neutralizing pretty much anything that gets up the road as folks in the break wait for reinforcements to bridge. At the same time though, if you get a good combination off at the right time and on the right part of the course, then it can pretty much immediately roll As at Jeff Cup though, this early in the season, people can do things that are unexpected - pull "wild card" performances. I don't think people are going to "let" Joe D. roll again, as he will be a marked man, but the more that people key in on and attempt to neutralize specific riders (for example, Russ Langley, Josh Frick, Chuck Hutcheson, Dave Fuentes, Joe Dombrowski, etc.), the more it opens the door for others to slip under the radar and put in a great performance.

Given all this, I suspect that the race plan for most of the teams will be pretty similar, just with different people filling the same roles. Some guys will have to take on the brunt of the work early in the race - if an early move goes then that is their ride, but otherwise, they are making sure that their team has representation in everything. Later in the race, other guys will probably have to come to the fore, depending on the difficulty of the race to that point, preference for the type of finish, etc. If a team is shooting to put certain riders into a late break, then others from that team will probably try and make the race more difficult so that a late move can spring the coop. At the same time, one or more teams may be looking to keep things locked down for a group sprint if they have an especially fast finisher. Walkersville is pretty amenable to a good leadout, particularly if the wind gets going.

Kelly has good options for every phase of the race so hopefully it is a good aggressive race that rewards hard (and smart) riding.

Post-Race Recap:

Well, Walkersville was done by the book and dominated by team riding. The hoped-for wind showed a bit of itself - unfortunately not as strong as last year, but enough that you needed to be mindful of its direction and to keep yourself on the sheltered side of the road.

The first ~10' of the race after the neutral rollout ended were pretty tough with attacks and counters going trying to get the first break up the road. On a pretty easy course like Walkersville (no super selective sections), this style of racing (throw everything up against the wall and see what sticks) really plays to the strengths of the bigger teams. Breaks that don't work come back and get reshuffled with different guys until either the right combo gets up the road or the elastic finally snaps in the pack. Bigger and deeper teams can afford to keep rotating guys through the breaks, while smaller teams (with just as quality riders) have it tougher in trying to pick their battles.

After almost exactly 10', a group of 4 or 5 (with one of ours, Jacob Mueller) got a small gap, and then Evan Fader hitched a ride across on a bridge that completed the move of 7 (2x Kelly Benefits, 2x Battley Harley, 1x Haymarket, 1x NCVC, and 1x ABRT). That was a solid composition, given that all the teams in the race except for Your Ad Here were represented. For the rest of the 1st lap, the break hovered pretty close, with plenty of people trying to jump out of the pack to bridge, but all were marked by Harley and Kelly riders. Coming through the feed zone on the 2nd lap, it looked like the break finally got a solid rotation going and started to pull away. At that point, we could go a bit more into blocking mode, whereas until the break really established itself, we had to be ready to counter if it got too close to coming back and/or mark bridge attempts so as to jump them if the bridge got close enough to the break.

The next few laps were pretty much spent eating, drinking, and following wheels near the front. The Your Ad Here guys put in several hard efforts to try and drag the break back, but there was too much horsepower up the road to make a dent. Eventually, Haymarket started getting antsy that they only had one rider in the move (once it became clear that it wasn't coming back on its own) and spent a couple of laps trying to send riders up the road. A course like Walkersville (particularly absent high winds) won't give a rider like Joe Dombrowski a chance to rip himself clear of the field, and after his huge performance at Jeff Cup, you can bet nobody was going to let him roll solo off into the distance. At this point, if you're only interested in personal results and not focused on getting your team the win, the race can, quite frankly, get boring with the field on lockdown. At this level though, once you get a bunch of guys really committed to getting the team results, the races take on a whole new aspect and are a lot of fun.

Up in the break, our two guys, Jacob and Evan, had the job of winning the race. With two guys, the best way to do this is to attack and counter off each other. They also have to be mindful of Brian Butts and Dave Fuentes, the two Harley riders, as they would be trying to do the same thing. The other 3 guys were basically privateers at that point and would likely just try to follow wheels and pick their moment. Fortunately, Evan countered an attack at the right moment, a few miles out, and stuck it for the solo win. Jacob was able to follow wheels in the chase and take 4th in the sprint, for 5th overall. Had the group been able to haul back Evan, it would have fallen to Jacob to rocket off and win the race. Back in the pack, R Muoio hopped in a small group on the last lap that stuck ahead of the field by a few seconds, so he was able to nab 9th.

The only weird thing about this race (besides the whole front of the field nearly getting wiped out by some deer sprinting across the road at the bottom of the first roller coaster section) was that the first real break stuck. This is pretty par for the course in July or August, when folks are a little bit less fresh in the head, but pretty unusual for early April racing, when everybody wants a piece of the pie. This break really did have perfect numbers though, and more than enough legs to stay clear.

--

David Kirkpatrick is a Features Editor with GamJams. He is enjoying growing fame through his blog Flamenco Chuckwagon, and as promoter of the lauded Lost River Classic.