Jay and Nate Compete at the Augusta Stop of The Georgia Cup

Written by Jay Charles 

Nate and I converged on Augusta to do some GA cup bike racing over the weekend. The race was a 75 mile road race on a hilly military base in Augusta, GA in the hot sun. At least we started at 9 am and the distance was cut down from the planned 90 miles.

Nate and I lined up with about 50 or so others and were off and racing. I had a bit of a delay since I started by riding around a cone by the start line, not realizing that the rf transponder attached to my fork, had to physically pass over the line for me to be counted. After riding back to the line and crossing it, I chased back on with another rider who did the same thing I did. Nate saw my predicament and had drifted to the back of the field in case I needed help pacing back on, leaving us out of position to cover the early moves. On the 2nd 15 mile lap at about mile 20, I managed to bridge across to the early break solo, making it six riders, representing six different teams. Diego Garavito (?) and Phillip Gaimon(CRCA Sakonnet) were there, but this group was missing most of the big contenders We worked pretty well together, and pushed the gap up to 2:15 on the field pretty quickly. We seemed to be pulling away, or maybe we were just being left out there to bake in the 90+ degree sun.

 At about mile 50, with a lot of tired legs in the break we were reeled in by
the group…almost. As the break sat up with the pack only 10 or 15
seconds back, Gaimon attacked and I followed. A little later we were
scooped up by Jered Gruber(Time) and Eric Murphy(AEG) and away we
went. I saddled up for another 25 breakaway miles to add to the 30 I
spent in the first break. We really motored in this group since Jered
was driving it hard to gain time for the overall win. I was cramping
on the last lap, but pulled through just enough to make things flow.
On the uphill sprint to the finish, I tried, but couldn’t match Eric’s
acceleration and settled for 2nd place. I wanted a win, but beating a
much fresher 130 lb pro up a hill, just wasn’t in the cards on this day.