Calabogie Classic M2 race report (Chris Mullington)

Honestly folks, I find race reports to be in the “you had to be there” vein of storytelling but since I have had an official request from Senor Rico Racing Director, I will comply.

I signed up as an M3 but for some reason the OCA has me down as an M2 so they left a phone message saying I had to ride M2, which was a drag because I had scheduled a visit with my mother for 2:30 pm. The early start and short duration of the “Depends Set” race would have allowed me to make it home on time. My mom let me reschedule.

Before the start I ran into Kevin “Gravytrain” Graves and his six little orphan bunnies. A friend of his found them and he is nursing them with an eye dropper. The mother was killed by I car, if I remember correctly. Damned cars!

I lined up for the start with my Wheeler comrades; Paddy Pedal, Rudeboy and Rico. I was not very confident because my ass has been kicked badly all spring and I was expecting today to be the same. Craig Burge had noted that I tend to get too frisky too early (in the races) and that I tend to blow my wad early (in the races!) so I figured I’d just hang out and watch from the back 3rd of the pack for a while.

I will now shift to the present tense as a storytelling device to make things sound more dramatic.

So I’m watching the race and every few laps John Gee is taking a flyer off the front. He’s staying away for half, sometimes three quarters of a lap each time. “Gee whiz! I wonder if he ever gets tired!” I say to myself. At one point about half way through the race I see that a couple of guys with unfamiliar jerseys are with him and I’m thinking “Hmmm. Nobody is going to bring them back. I wonder if I can get the bunch to speed up enough to keep them under control.” I go to the front and ramp it up for a minute and then pull over and lo and behold, the pack oozes by me and slurps them up like a frog with a blowfly. That’s neat! I’m watching Rudeboy so I start singing the old Desmond Dekker song “Shanty Town”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5y8RG_7zgY.  Nobody is smiling! Nobody appreciates real talent here! Paddy Pedal is up near the front, playing policeman. Rico is cruising along beside me. ” Howya doin’?” he says. I say “Relaxing”.

To make the story more interesting, I did see a Pileated Woodpecker in a tree in the parking lot just before I lined up for the start.

Back in the race, same old John Gee doing the same old attacking. One of the CHCH guys from Hamilton goes “wow, that guy is at it again!” and I say “yeah, one of these times he’s gonna make it stick, he can time trial like a sonovabitch!”. A few laps later, with about 5 laps to go, Johnny Geewillikers does it again – the CHCH guy goes with him, joined shortly after by another out of towner on a red Trek (I dunno anybody from out of town) and a Eurosport guy I haven’t me before. A Toronto guy in green and white tries to go after them and isn’t making contact. They get about 200 metres up the road and the bunch is going slow. I move up to the front and pretend I’m not up to anything but when there’s a little uphill rise I push it smoothly for a bit and get a few, maybe 7 bike lengths and then get into full on choo-choo mode, bridging the 200 M in about I KM and bringing Green and White with me. We are now a break of 6 guys from 6 different clubs and we know that our buddies in the bunch are not going to work to bring us back.

And that’s pretty well it. We worked together and kept it going hard in case somebody back in the bunch got organized and with about 500M to go, Johnny Gee jumped, gapped and we chased. He just made it to the line in front and we all were very close at the finish, yours truly about 6 inches shy of third.

I think my friends were shocked to see me in the break today. I certainly was. I certainly feel a debt of gratitude to Dave “Rudeboy” Rudnicki, “Rico” Bourgeault  and Paddy Anagram for their monkey wrenching (despite the accusations of ‘sandbagging’ they have hurled at me). I am also very respectful of John Gee, who rode a very classy, aggressive race and totally deserved the win.