Did I Actually Beat These Guys?

From my earlier posts, you might know that I did my first
road race in 30 years a few weeks ago - the San Ardo RR
( you can read about it here ).

One of the things I like to do for my races is scope out
the competition, of course - and with everything getting
blasted out onto the web these days, it's not all that hard
to do if you race bicycles.

Some of the promoters of various races use BikeReg.com or
SportsBaseOnline.com to register the entrants - and both of
those websites allow you to look at a list of all the current
registered cyclists for the different race categories - how
nice!

So, you can look at the list of names in your race, and then
go to usacycling.org to check out their racing palmares.

Having looked at a lot of names over the past few months
( starting about the time I got interested in racing bikes
again ), I happened to become familiar with a number of racers -
not by face, mind you - like everything else on the web these
days, just virtually. And occasionally, I get to actually
meet some of these individuals at the races I'm now starting
to attend ( or the training rides - like those Noon Goon rides
I do out of Palo Alto a few times during the weekdays ).

So I happened to be browsing through the race results for
my San Ardo race ( you can see for yourself here ) and suddenly,
I saw 2 names that popped out at me - Frederick Stamm and
John Novitsky - and I noticed that I had actually placed
ahead of both of those guys! I got 16th, Frederick got 21st,
and John got 26th.

So what's the big deal about that?

Well, first of all, I could have easily placed a lot higher -
top 10 for sure, and top 5 maybe - but I had made a really
dumb tactical error towards the end of the race (duh!).

But more importantly, I had actually beaten both those guys -
and these are guys I had dreamed of one day beating, mostly
because they are both strong riders that regularly do quite
well in road races and hillclimb events - climbing hills is
my one main weakness that I intend to work on this next year -
but these guys can climb quite well, especially considering
that they are about my age (John is 49 and Frederick is 55 -
and I'm 53).

John Novitsky can time-trial really well, too - he beat just
about everybody in the Beat-the-Clock Canada Road time trials
this last year ( check out the results page here ).

And you can check out John's racing palmares and see his
accomplishments in some of the races he's done over the
last few years - impressive!

I got to know Frederick Stamm's name because of the
Low Key Hillclimb Series that was held last year
( it was originally held about 10 or 11 years ago for a
couple of years ) - and Frederick consistently placed quite
well on the hillclimbs - especially considering that he's
55 years old! I plan on doing the climbing series this year -
it's coming up soon! - and I always thought it would be nice
if I could eventually climb as well as Frederick Stamm,
among others.

And he has an impressive racing palmares, too - as you
can see by checking out his racing results over the last few
years. So I thought it would be cool to someday be able to
compete with him in a race.

And now, I see that in my first road race in 30 years, I actually
beat both these guys! - woooohoooo!!!

Now, the San Ardo race didn't exactly play to their strengths -
in fact, one reason I picked that race as my first road race in
30 years was precisely because it wasn't too hilly - just a lot
of rollers and a long flat stretch on the backside of the course.

But still...how cool is that? Maybe I'll have a chance to be more
competitive next year - especially if I get some assistance in my
training from Dennis Pedersen and the new team he just joined,
Bicycle Trip.

I can't wait to see what happens next year with my racing...