USAC Amateur Road Nationals!!

What an amazing weekend.

All year, this has felt like some far-off dot on an unseen horizon. Nationals are coming! Late July! Hagerstown, MD: so close you can't NOT go. And as the current state champion, Alastair had a right and a duty to represent VA Cycling on a national stage.

But it never really felt like it was actually coming until it was almost right on top of us, and the 3 weeks leading up to it were a fury of planning, training, and building a new bike (more on that later). Then suddenly, amazingly, terrifyingly, it was time to pack and go.

We'd gotten his speed up from a consistent 16 mph to just a tick over 18 on road rides just this year, including a 35-miler at 18.4 just a few days prior to leaving. That's a lot of work for anybody, but a kid pushing A- paces felt pretty amazing, and all the recovery models projected he'd be in pretty much top form for the weekend. We were excited and confident in his ability, but I was secretly terrified of what might happen in a group.

Prior to this weekend, he'd never raced in a peloton. He'd never raced a group larger than 17, and that group split apart within the first 2 minutes of that race. This would be chaos of a whole new level for him, and I really wanted to bring home a whole boy and a whole bike. Would he be skittish in a group? Would he grab a handful of confidence-brake in the middle of a descent? Would he pick a too tight or too loose line through a turn and hook bars/wheels/elbows with an adjacent rider? Having just recently broken a hand and a face, and with last year's broken ribs fresh in my memory, I shuddered to think what might happen.

Fortunately, the first event was a TT. Whew. Nothing to worry about there except just laying down consistent power...something he's never actually trained for specifically. Every time he'd tried on Zwift, his heart rate would max out at about 190, a full 15 bpm off what it should be. Maybe it was race nerves, maybe it was just ferocity, but he jumped out of that start house at 190 bpm, ran his heart straight to 205, and held it there. For the entire 6.9 mile ride, his heart never dipped below 199, and as he made his way back to the finish line he touched 214, crossing the line at 21:04 with an average speed of 19.4 mph.

Roll-out done and passed! I like that they do it before the start, so kids don't destroy themselves with effort only to be DQ'd

Anticipation and focus

Up in the start-house, cross-chained and ready to roll

While it was briefly good enough for 4th place, we then started seeing and hearing some of the other finishers' performances, and soon heard a staggering 17:28 for the eventual winner. A 12 year old boy rode 23 mph on a road bicycle for almost 7 miles. Then he got off the bike...and he was as tall as I am. In fact most of the podium was towering giants. Other parents suggested--only half in jest--that some genetic testing might be in order.

Either way, I was incredibly proud and blown away by his performance. He excelled at a type of riding that he's never trained for. TT's require incredible concentration. If you get bored and let your mind wander, the pace drops almost immediately. But he didn't: he held super strong, and may actually have a real future in this very specific racing format. His final position was 16th of 24, so rounding out the middle 3rd of the group. Amazing, especially when you consider that he'd drawn the unfortunate position of first-rider. He had nobody ahead of him to try to catch, and was the bunny for the rest of the group.


Friday was a rest day, and we were just 12 miles from Antietam, so we took in some of the battleground and drove over to scout the road race course. Friday also marked the end of sleep for Alastair, as the nerves and caffeine caught up to him.

We got up Saturday and made our way lazily to the road course. He got straight to work warming up while I got set up to spectate. Another local VA boy showed up, but with his dad's fancy carbon fiber wheels, a move I'd considered but ultimately abandoned because of braking performance.

Right out of the gate the group split in two, with Thursday's titans driving a hard pace up the climb. Both groups were similarly sized, and the field of 32 quickly became 2 groups of 12 with the rest stuck in no-man's land.


Both groups withered throughout the race, and inexplicably on the last lap Alastair decided to participate in the feed zone, taking a bottle and giving up time on his group. Though he clawed back on and actually pulled for a bit, he lost touch on the descent and ended up coming in alone. By the end, the chase group was down to 4, and he finished 23rd of 32.

Heart rate data showed he'd given 100% to the effort, but cadence data suggested he could have raced far more efficiently, and having watched the call-up process, we know he gave up positions before the race ever started.

All in all, it was a great performance for his first real mass-start large-field race.

Sunday would see the final event of the weekend: the crit. And I have to say, I was really nervous. Course recon and advice from friends suggested the first turn would provide some fireworks for the day, as the road narrows dramatically just past the turn. And in fact we got there early enough to watch a girl from the morning's first race crash hard in that exact spot.

But after a couple of miles of warm-up, he headed to roll-out and again failed to fight for position in the call-up sprint. Straight off the line, the big kids laid down huge power and split the group. This time the split was a bit less even, with about 15 in the front group, 10 in Alastair's chase group, and about 4 riders on their own.

The fast group was almost fast enough to lap the chase group, but they stayed just out of reach to finish on the lead lap, 1:45 behind the leaders. There were no wrecks that we saw, though we did later see a boy from his race getting medical attention, and Alastair again finished 23rd (of 29), 1 position behind the other VA Cycling representative.

Though none of his performances were at the level he'd expected going in, he had a great time in every race, and has some specific things he wants to work on for next year. Because yes: he really wants to go back and do it again. He wants to be a US Road Champion.