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Tales from the Peloton
Team Lardbutt aren't the fastest team in the US, they aren't the best equipped team, and we aren't even sure if they really exist. But they are funny (usually) and have some great tales to tell about the races they compete in (if they make it).
Sea Gull Century: Belgium by the beach
By Greg Taylor
One hundred ten kilometers, fifteen to go, and our group of escapees from the peloton is driving hard across the damp plain. Out of the original breakaway of twelve, there are now eight of us left, which is about six too many for my taste.
A quick visual sweep of the breakaway reveals a pack of hostile jerseys on my wheel and a team-mate, the graying and flatulent Allan. We struggle along the flat roads that cross the treeless landscape, a landscape that does little to stop the cold wind and teeming rain that is sweeping across the cracked and pitted asphalt. The air is heavy with the smell of tilled soil and fresh fertilizer. Yes, it is miserable, but it is miserable for everybody and it is now time to make it even more miserable with another hard acceleration.
So I attack again. Allan follows, his once-resplendent "Teem Laardbutte" jersey now a shapeless and sodden gray winding sheet, a garment usually reserved for burying the dead. The allusion to the dead is apt as the brutal acceleration causes more riders give up the ghost and fall back in to the cold death-like embrace of the peloton. The attack works and our group of eight is now pared down to three: two Laardbuttes and a rider on a Cervelo, quite possibly Tyler Hamilton from CSC.
Five kilometers to go: two Laardbuttes against one -- it's hardly fair. A glance at the Cervelo rider reveals a face contorted in a rictus grin of pain -- clearly, it is time to finish it. A final attack. The Cervelo rider cannot respond. It is over.
Some words between Allan and I, and my teammate accelerates clear and into the finish and victory. It is a deserved result that will help my friend secure a contract for next year. Suffering over, officials guide us through the crowd to the parc ferme leading us to... the picnic table where the ladies from the local church are serving pie and ice cream.
Church ladies serving pie and ice cream? What!? No pretty girls handing out the trophies? What the hell-kind of a podium celebration is this?
Then you wake up. No, you have not been suffering across wet and windy Flanders in a UCI World-Cup race and, no, that was not Tyler Hamilton on the Cervelo back there. Welcome to the 15th Annual Sea Gull Century in Salisbury, Maryland. Feel free to have all the pie and ice cream that you want.
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Sponsored by Salisbury State University, the Sea Gull Century (www.seagullcentury.org) is one of those events where a racer can enjoy a fun afternoon and a recreational rider can feel like an Armstrong or a Merckx for a day. It's big (6,000+ riders), flat (the biggest "hills" consist of a small bridge and a highway overpass), and fast (a 20+ mph average for 100 miles is the norm). While the route of the Sea Gull takes you out to the sands of the Atlantic coastline at Assateague Island, its signature feature remains, without a doubt, the famed "pie stop" at mile 80. Riders roll up to the park at Adkins Mill Pond where the ladies from the local Lion's Club serve all the apple pie and ice cream that you can handle.
The flat route and high speeds can make for a pleasantly testosterone-rich afternoon. Under normal conditions, the ride usually devolves into massive pacelines vying with each other for honors on the road. Hook up with the right group, and you can hang at 25-30 mph all day. Hook up with the wrong group, and you can wind up on your ass with equal rapidity; the Sea Gull is known for spectacular speeds and spectacular carnage in equal measures. And this year the Sea Gull had some spectacularly bad weather to boot.
No, the weather wasn't "hurricane" bad, just "cold, windy and rainy for 100 miles" bad. "Epic" ride bad. Bad enough that it was very easy to imagine yourself cold and wet in the middle of a hard-driving pack of riders in some Belgian road race, especially when some of the local racing squads rumbled through at speed. The only thing missing was the mud and the cobbles.
Certainly not missing from the picture were good riders. Lordy, lordy, lordy, there were some fast groups out there. In terms of numbers and class, it would be tough to top the showing by DC Velo, a local Washington D.C. racing club. The DC Velo guys were quite impressive as they pounded by us smaller fry in hot pursuit of the smaller-in-numbers-yet-still-very-impressive Ocean Velo riders, resplendent in Rabobank-like orange and blue. Stirring stuff, especially in the wet.
Team Lardbutt? We were there, just smaller in numbers and a tad bit more disorganized than usual. Actually we were way more disorganized than usual, and the rain didn't help matters much. Lardbutt Rule #1: discretion is almost certainly always the better part of valor, and it's tough to drink those post-ride beers if you are lying on your back in the middle of the road waiting for an ambulance.
In short, we took it easy out of respect for the weather conditions. At least that's what we're telling people who ask about it, thank you very much. Our showing this year certainly had NOTHING to do with the fact that it rained and that there was a head wind all day, or that certain unnamed Lardbutts were talked into leaving all of their rain gear in the car by certain other unnamed Lardbutts, or that yours truly decided in a fit of perversity to ride his track bike in the fastest century of the year. Still, we eventually did get it all put together and managed a damp-yet-respectable effort from the midpoint at Assateague Island (also known this year as "Ass-Fatigue Island") to the finish back at the college. Indeed, it was an effort worthy of a Spring Classic.
Just ask that guy on the Cervelo, the one pretending to be Tyler Hamilton. He knows that Team Lardbutt was at the Sea Gull this year. And be sure to tell him that his second helping of pie was on us.
