Over the years, I’ve considered racing the Bazaar Road Race many times, and this year I finally decided to do it. The road race in the Flint Hills is just close enough to NWA to drive there, race, and drive home in one day. The 47-mile course is an out and back course oriented mainly north-south, with the finish line at the northern end. There were a few small rolling hills but the main factor in the race would be the 15-20 mile per hour wind from the west, which would be a crosswind for over 90% of the race.
There were about 20 riders in the field. The Move Up team was well represented with Michael Allison, Tyler Cheslik, and Matt Ledbetter. Jordan Miller (Landis Trek) was there as the defending champion. John Shalebriski (USMES), Craig Kielbasa (South Chicago Wheelmen), and William Henkhaus (Quantum) also factored into the racing.
The race went about as you would expect a race to go in the crosswinds. The first 12 miles featured attacks and counter-attacks and different riders trying to gutter the field. It wasn’t long before half the field was dropped in the crosswinds. A few small short-lived breakaways were formed, but nothing that got more than a handful of seconds in front of the chasers. Around mile 12, after riding hard in the crosswinds, the pace suddenly slowed, I was in the back at the time and used my momentum to launch an attack. I was hoping I might get at least one rider to follow me but instead I was away solo. I rode just hard enough to keep a 15-20 second gap on the field. I knew I wasn’t going to stay away solo for 35 miles to the finish line, so I either needed a rider to bridge across to me, or the whole group to chase me down. Fortunately, after a few minutes I saw a Move Up rider bridging across to me. I slowed down just a little bit to wait for Michael to catch me, and then we started working together pretty well. At this point, I was feeling pretty good tactically. There were 6 riders chasing the two of us, but two of them were Michael’s teammates leaving only 4 on 2. We grew our lead over the chasers to 30 seconds, but that was all they would let us get. After 30 minutes in the breakaway they caught us shortly after the turnaround.
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Almost immediately more counter-attacks were launched. Pretty soon I was in another breakaway with Jordan and two Move Up riders. This one lasted about 10 minutes and we were caught with 15 miles to go. From there until the finish, our group of 8 riders pretty much stayed together. The biggest hill in the race came around 4 miles from the finish line. I had wanted to attack there but wind conditions wouldn’t allow for that. Instead I would have to wait for the other attack point that I identified when we drove in to the race – a pair of rollers around three quarters of a mile from the finish line.
Once I had decided I was going to attack here, I made my way to the back of our group. With a few more riders, the group might’ve been too big to launch from the very back, but with eight riders I thought it would work. I worked to stay in the back over the last few miles. Letting other riders take up the chase when any attacks went. We entered the final mile still together, and as we crested the top of the first roller I let a little bit of a gap open up between me and the rest of the group I let my momentum build and closed the gap on the downhill, then launched my attack just as we started to go up again. When I sat back down in the saddle after 15 seconds of sprinting, I looked back to see a pretty substantial gap. Thirty more seconds of pedaling as hard as I could and I checked behind again to see a gap of about 50 meters. I knew that should be good enough to comfortably get the win if I could keep going for just 30 more seconds. The winning attack lasted 90 seconds, and I averaged 494 watts. Tyler and Michael on Move Up rounded out the podium in second and third.
Getting the first win of the season is always a good feeling, especially when it comes at your first road race in over six months. This was just the start of a big block of road racing, as I have the chance to head back to Kansas for the Perry Dam race next weekend, followed by Crosswinds and NWA Spring Classic in the following weeks, all building up to the back-to-back weekends of Gravel Locos and Joe Martin in May.
Andrew Evans 