John “Rolf” Eisinger Diary

Kentucky state championship race report

Length: 80 miles

Place: 1st!

It was a hot muggy day with little cloud cover. The field was smaller, but had some talented riders including a guy wearing a national championship jersey. Hmmm. The race started out with a comfortable pace for the first few miles of an 80 mile day.

I was the first to ride off the front in a passive aggressive fashion. It allowed me a small gap for which I started to put more power into the pedals and create 15-20 sec gap before the field started to chase me down. The got within 20 meters when two guys shot out of the field. I tag their wheels and we continued to ride hard as the peloton sat up. We had about 2 1/2 minutes on the peloton when one of the guys in the break started to dangled. As word got back to the peloton about this rider his team started to set tempo to chase us down. We made it to mile 55 with our two man break when a group of five caught us.

A few miles later, there was a longer steeper hill. I noticed going up it that some of the guys were having difficulties so I attacked to pop a few guys. We were down to four. As we attacked and countered attacked each other; it was not until another hill about 10 miles from the finish which I threw down a big effort. I dropped the guys and rode over the top by myself. The national champion clawed his way back to my wheel where as the other two riders were nowhere to be seen. We rode into the finish trading off fast pulls.

We entered the city of London, KY side by side. I wasnít exactly sure how to get to the finish but when the one K sign went by I knew we were close. He started to break and get into my draft. Just as we were approaching a right hand corner he was on the inside and breaking I saw I had a little gap and a solid line into the corner. I hit it with all I had. I got a little bit bigger gap as I looked up I saw more orange cones and another right corner then a block later a left corner and then another right corner. It was wild sprinting 30+ mph block to block not knowing which way to go until I was on top of the corners. Finally I was sprinting down the finishing straight. I looked back, to see a solid gap and him sitting up which allowed me to coast over the finish line as the 2007 Kentucky State Road Race Champion!

We'll wait to see where I'm headed next season, as I'm still looking for a team to race full time with for 2008. Until next time...