MaxPowerCycling

-Bill Golembieski

My mom and I met Andy Ross and Wayne at 6 to head down to Albany for the race. We managed to cram everything into Wayne’s car and we departed on our 2 hour journey. We arrived and I went in and registered. After registration I warmed up for around an hour and jumped in with my race group. I was riding with Masters 65+, First Timers, One day license, Juniors 15-18, and Local Police,Fire, and Military. I could tell this race was going to be pretty easy to keep up with. We got read our pre-race instructions and there were a few hilarious questions coming from the first timers. Such questions as “What’s neutral start?”, “What’s a feed zone?”, “What’s Junior gearing and do I need to have it?”, and the best one “What’s a race marshal?” My friend Jordan Strober and I were trying not to burst out into laughter.

The race started and we had a 3 mile neutral start. The car was going at around 15-17 mph and I was drafting it with Jordan right beside me. We told the guy to turn on the radio and we were listening to music for around a mile or two. Then I looked back and saw a huge line of cars behind us which I thought was pretty funny. Jordan and I started singing “What is Love?” by Jimmy Haddaway and there were a few people who joined in. We reached the first hill in the neutral start and we sang all the way up to the finish line dropping half the field in the process before the race even started. As soon as we crossed the start line Jordan and I started to Sprint. Everyone jumped on our wheel and we hammered up every hill we came across. We now had a group of about 8 a few minutes later. We slowed down and a Master took off but I reeled him in. Jordan then came up beside me bobbing his head and we started singing “What is Love?” again while everyone was gasping for air due to our constant attacks going up hills. I think a few people then decided to sit in as much as possible after our singing because I was in the front pulling until “The Wall”. On the downhill section I opened up a gap in order to be first to reach “The Wall”. I dropped it into my little gears in order to respond to any attacks that were launched. Sure enough a kid from Farm Team sped by me up the hill. I jumped on his wheel and let him pull me up “The Wall” we reached the top and I took over in the front in order to keep the 10 second gap we had. I was hammering down the hill and through most of the flat section. When I pulled off the front I looked back and I didn’t see the field. This got me motivated to try and destroy the field. When I took over the front again I got down into a TT position and was doing 33 down hill and 27-28 in the flats. I was dropping the kid I was with on flats and downhills. I asked him how he was doing and he said he was fine. I let him pace for a little bit then I took over again. I would do 27ish for around a minute or two then he would take over and do around 25 or 26. I thought “They are never gunna catch us!”. We came into the finishing hill and he pulled up along side me. It seemed he wasn’t going to play cat and mouse so we chit chatted until the 200M mark. I said “Ready?”, then we both took off side by side. He had acceleration but I eventually pulled in front of him with around 50M to go and won the race.

I headed back down to the school and got rolled out by one of the officials. I then went back up and saw the Cat 3/4s finish. I rode back to the car where I met everyone and we went down to the school to receive the medal I won. We got inside and I went over to the table with all the medals and an official came up to me and asked me for ID. I showed it to him and I received my medal. He also gave me a cycling cap,a water bottle, a shirt, and he told me I should join his club and he would get me a coach. My mom said that would be great but we live in Syracuse and unless I biked there it wouldn’t be possible. He said “Well I hope to see you next year.” and I said “I will see you next year.” We then made the 2 hour car ride back. When we got back we got all my stuff out of the car and I packed it into my car. While we were packing my mom said “at least you didn’t get hurt today” because I was complaining about being tired. Not 2 minutes later I slammed my finger in the door and It was bleeding for at least 5 minutes.

It was a great race and a fun coarse! I plan on doing this race again next year. Also I would like to thank Wayne for allowing us to carpool with him and Andy Ross.

((Side Story- We pulled into a rest stop on the thru-way and we went and got something to eat. I got a BK double stacker (regret it) and Wayne got a smoothie of some sort. We sat down and started to eat. Andy Ross then proceeded to eat a plum in front of me while I was eating my heart attack on a bun. I offered him a fry as a joke and he obviously refused. Then Wayne went over to Dunkin Doughnuts and something strange happened. Andy Ross went over and got a jelly filled Doughnut!!! I think he gave in to the pressure hahah.))

-Bill Golembieski

I woke up to the sound of the rocky theme playing on my phone because I set it for my alarm to wake me up. I was running on 4 and a half hours of sleep (1:30am-6am) but surprisingly I wasn’t really that tired. We departed at 7:45 and arrived at 9:15ish. I quickly registered and got dressed. I also switched my junior gearing out from the other day. I then found Jake (another junior) and we started it warm up. You see I already felt warmed up because I was racing 15 hours before this race haha. I was feeling like crap and I went back to the car to take my underarmor top off. I then ate some power gel gummy type things and I gave some to Jake to try out. We then went back up to the finishing line and turned around to go to where we were going to start. Andy Ross called me over and told us to stay as a team through the start because it would get a little squirrelly. The race director told us it was a controlled start and we wouldn’t go more than 12mph or so. Andy was like “yeah right” to me and told me they’ve went fast at the beginning in recent years.

We started off and I got stuck in the pack a little bit until I saw an opening and rode up to the front with the rest of the team. We started to climb a hill and I was feeling a little better. I was going a little too hard and Andy reminded me to not go too hard up this hill. So I backed off and grabbed his wheel. We crested the hill and we then sped up. There was around 40 or so riders still with us and we thinned out to 2 wide as we reached speeds of 27-30mph. Jake had junior gearing on so I got up next to him and asked him how the gears were because he was spinning out. He said “GREAT!!” and we both laughed. I asked him where this KOM hill was and he said we go through a town and it starts right after we get out of it. I then moved up toward Andy Ross as he opened a gap in our group. I stuck on his wheel and then we encountered a pretty decent hill I asked Andy how long this hill was and he told me “oh not long only around a half mile”.  We hit the hill and I went up to the front and rode tempo at around 11-12mph. We reached the top and I felt great. Andy then proceeded to pass me. He then accelerated down hill and I got onto his wheel. We then hit a semi-flat section and I asked Jake where the KOM hill was. He told me we would go into a town and then it was right after we left the town. Andy accelerated down the hill and others grabbed his wheel. We got into the town, made a right turn, and hit a 25 yard hill.After cresting this little hill I looked up the road and I saw it winding up at around 5-7%. I then grabbed a wheel and tried to ride my own tempo again. They were going slightly faster up this hill (12ish) so I had to work a little harder. We then reached a flattish section and I asked Andy if that was the top and he said “No we are around halfway done”. He then told me that he would give me a hand signal when we were reaching the top. A few minutes later someone crashed behind us and we were worried it was Jeff Hoover but then Jeff told us he was still with us and we continued riding.There were around 10 guys with us in the lead group by this time. We encountered the final uphill section and Andy gave me the hand signal. Halfway up the hill a guy took off and Jake followed. I was kinda blocked in but I managed to get out. I was catching up with Jake and the other guy when I noticed Jake’s glasses were on the ground. I got in front of the guy chasing Jake and slowed up, and Jake took the $100 KOM hill prime. I caught up with him and so did the others. I then told him that the $100 should go toward his new glasses haha. We had a downhill section and Andy took off and I grabbed his wheel. He then powered through the rolling section of the course. He was really hammering and I had a hard time holding his wheel. We had a nice 4 or 5 second gap but were eventually caught. We then went onto a gravel paved road and there were a few rollers on it but everyone managed to stay together. We then reached a flat section on top of a hill and it started to downpour. My glasses fogged up and I couldn’t see very well. We then got back onto a paved road and it was raining harder than before and as an added bonus there was lightning! We then encountered a hill and Jake attacked. I Thought he was trying to establish a break so I tried to catch up with him and a few guys passed me and I grabbed their wheel. We eventually caught him and I was like “Hey what was that for??(jokingly)

“. He said he had enough of getting water in his face so he wanted to get out of it. We then powered along and Andy took over the front stringing everyone out into a line. Jeff was behind him and I was behind Jeff (GO MAXPOWER lol). We then exchanged some pulls until we reached the turn into the finish. Andy was in front and I was behind him. I started to brake for the turn and I wasn’t slowing down that much. Some guy was off to the side yelling “SLOW DOWN!!!!!” I ignored him and took the turn at around 20 or so. I past Andy and looked back because there was 200 Meters to go. I was right in front of Andy and the rest of the group was about 2 bikes behind him. I then saw the finish line and started to half sprint. I looked back and saw I had a pretty good lead then started all out sprinting. I saw FINISH and looked under to see if anyone was there. I saw no one and crossed the line in First place. I was extremely happy.

We rode down and gave our chips to a girl and she threw them in a bucket. I then got dressed and went down to to registration tent where I saw all the trophy and stuff. Pretty cool. I then talked with Andy for a while about the race. They then started the Awards Ceremony and I received my trophy. We then got a picture of Andy, Jeff, and I holding our trophies. We then packed up and went home.

It was a great race and I had a lot of fun doing it!

-Bill Golembieski

I arrived in Rochester and we drove around for a bit until we came across the race. We asked a police officer where registration was and he told us to go park in the parking lot and it was near the food tents somewhere. So we parked and asked around where registration was. We were told it was in the first floor of the library right behind us after wandering around for 10 minutes. I registered and warmed up on the course in between events. It was a real technical course with a bunch of turns, potholes, and what-not. After my 10 minute warm up, I rode down to the staging area and joined in with the master 35+ group. Right after the womens race we were sent out on the course to go to the starting line. Everyone was going pretty fast. There was this one back road I didn’t like because the road was in bad shape and at the end of the road was a 180 degree turn into an uphill finish. We got to the starting line and I positioned myself in the top 15 or so. I was then told to go to the back of the race because the other juniors were there. I was pretty mad but I went back there anyway to meet my two competitors. We were staring with the masters and I didn’t understand why I had to move back because they positioned themselves poorly or whatever happened.

Anyway, the race started off but the pace car didn’t so I almost smashed into it as everyone went around it. We took the first turn pretty fast but I managed to get myself a few spots up. We then hit a downhill and the pace quickly picked up to 35+ mph and I had trouble keeping up with my junior gearing as everyone I overtook at the corner motored past me. I was at the tail end of the main pack and there was another group about 4-5 seconds back containing the other juniors and I thought “Great they will never be able to keep up at these speeds. So I took I took it easy and drafted the guy in front of me. We came through the start and the announcer said “Look at the masters go!! They aren’t wasting any time at all!” He said that because we came flying through the start at around 27mph. Whoever was on the front was really hammering it because the speed didn’t drop at all until we had 10 or so laps to go. Around 15 laps to go our group split in 2 as people off the front attacked. I hammered to bridge it but I couldn’t close the gap until we hit the hill. I took off after them and eventually caught them. Around 7 laps to go I looked back to see if the other juniors were there and there was one. I stopped pedaling and let him pass me. I grabbed his wheel and stayed on it until around 3 laps to go. We both slowed because we didn’t need to race with the masters because we were riding our own race. A little cat and mouse ensued and I attacked as he swerved over on the downhill. He eventually caught up and I was pulling on the front for a lap. I thought about ways to get him attack. I remembered on one of the tour stages were a Team Columbia guy was in the same situation but I didn’t have a jersey to zip up. So I decided to wait a little bit and around half way through the course on the last lap I shifted down a cog and took a drink out of my water bottle. Boom he attacked as I thought he would and I grabbed his wheel as we went down the road I don’t like and started to go to the finish. At 200 meters to go he started sprinting and I grabbed his wheel and moved back to about a bike and a half back. At 150 meters I accelerated into the slipstream and passed him to take 1st.

I got rolled out and rode around for a bit and watched the Mens 3/4 race. Then around 7:50 I went on the course and rode around with the pros that were about to race. I had a nice chat with a few guys from Toyota United and Colavita. I then exited the course and was stuck behind a bunch of spectators. Just then a kid came up to me and asked if I would sign his helmet. Haha. I was like uhhhhhh sure? I then went back to the car and got dressed. I watched the pro race and wow they are FAST! It then started to rain pretty heavily and a bunch of guys crashed. They took they’re free lap and got back in. They had to do 50 laps to complete the Crit. As the last lap came up I went to the finish line where I could’nt see anything because of the number of people there. All I saw was a Toyota United cyclist cross the finish line first. I watched the award ceremony then went home. We arrived back at the house at around 1-1:30 am and I went to sleep to prepare for the race I had to do the next day.

All in all it was a great race and I had a lot of fun doing it! I also was able to keep up with the masters that were hammering it until 7 laps to go.

-Bill Golembieski