Univest Grand Prix, Sept. 19, 2004

by Tim Henry (Jittery Joes)

Every once in a while you have a really good day. And if you time it right, that good day can coincide with a big race. This is the case for me this year at the Univest Grand Prix. I had a day when I rode completely beyond myself and got an awesome result. The Univest Grand Prix continues to be my favorite road race of the year. Held in a Philadelphia suburb called Souderton, Univest brings in some of the best amateur teams from Europe and the US (and a few D3 pro teams from the US) and is one of only six UCI ranked races in North America. For this years race I am riding with Jittery Joe's Pro Cycling Team. The course is designed to be a European style race with short steep hills, roads winding through river valleys and wide open plains where the wind can shred the field. It is a beautiful course. Unfortunately, we did not get to enjoy much of this beautiful course because of a little storm called Ivan. What was left of Ivan rolled into Souderton late the night before the race and I woke up the morning of to a cold and very wet day. The start was scheduled for 10:30 so about 10:00 I left our warm and pleasant host's house to roll down to sign in. Upon arrival at the start line I talked to our team manager, Chris Pic, who informs me the race has been postponed until 11:15 and that the opening 100k loop of the course has been closed due to torrential flooding and debris in the road. The race was changed to 26 laps of the 5k closing circuit for a total distance of about 120k or 80 miles. The finishing loop contained a relatively short hill that could only be described as tough after 25 times up, so the race would still be very hard. On top of that, the Belgian and French teams were no doubt excited by the bad weather and probably thought they could destroy the race and all of us whimpy Americans. So my team sat in the van for 45 minutes talking about how cold it was and how much the race would suck until we finally had to get out and go to the line. Standing at the start was absolutely miserable and I was shivering uncontrollably. After they introduced what seemed like everyone in Souderton on stage, we got to the president of the Univest bank who was our starter. By the time he said "racers ready..." we were at the first turn and the race was on. After two sketchy and tight turns we hit the hill. I had so much adrenaline going that I big ringed the hill and hardly noticed how hard that should have been. After the hill comes a long false flat through a wide open area (read: windy) with lots of turns and several inches deep puddles. The pack was all together for the first two laps but I worked hard to cover European attacks because I thought the race would split up early. After about five laps a move did go and I was not in it. A couple laps later I saw two Belgian riders from the same team (their jerseys were pink so I'll call them team pink for now) attack and I jumped after them. They got a good gap on me on the hill but when we got to the twisty section I caught them quickly because Europeans corner like little girls. The riders did not do a very good job of hiding their surprise when they saw me pulling through to catch the group ahead of us. So we caught the break in half a lap and I realized that there were three more team pink riders in the 15 man group already. I also found out they had one rider up the road in what would become the winning 2-man move. So they had the numbers and I did my best to cover all of them. They swore at me up and down trying to get me to waste my energy on the front but I told them where to stick it. I'm not sure how many laps went by like that but later on another small group bridged to my break and then another group of about 8 split off the front. Sometime after that I split off with 7 others and we became the 3rd group on the road. We did not have enough horsepower to catch the group in front of us so I assumed we would finish like that. But the race was far from over. With about 12 laps to go I split off with two other riders, Jonathan Eardlyi (2003 National U-23 RR champion) and Mike Voight (2003 National Elite RR champion) and we drilled it for two or three laps and caught the second group on the road. Now I was in the race, I thought! Unfortunately, I was gettting kinda tired by then and had to let a few good moves go. I was consoled because I knew a top 20 result at Univest was my goal and I was well inside that. The remainder of the race was more of the same, a couple small moves got away and the attacks were constant. By the last couple laps the rain had stopped but I was too tired to care. In the final 1k, an Italian and Belgian attacked and Mike Voight led the train of Jonathan and I home. We caught the European pair going into 200 meters and I won the sprint in my group for 13th place in the race. I am super happy with my result in such a prestegious race. I have only two races left before I hang the bike up for the off season break and I can't wait.
 

Thanks for reading,
Tim