April 28, 2004 – Jamie Lamb (Cyclesmith/Kona) wins a second race in a row. This is good timing to start feeling good with the Canada Cups quickly approaching. Sunday's race was held in Athens, Georgia (same place as where he won the MTB TT on Wednesday). Here's what he had to say:
“I am currently in Athens Georgia, staying with Don Newman, a fellow Canadian we met in March. We left Boone last Saturday and drove to a race in Clemson, SC. We stayed with Cannondale rider Thomas Turner. The course started with a five-minute climb up a fire road and then swept into a mixture of more fire road and singletrack before finishing at the top of the start climb. I had a decent start and was in about eighth going into the singletrack when a broken chain relegated me to the back of the pack of about 25 pros. I was actually feeling my best yet and quickly mowed down most of the field to get into seventh by the start of the fourth (of five) laps. I passed one more rider by the finishing climb and saw two more just ahead. I dug deep and got two more on the finishing climb, sprinting for the line with Thomas Turner. I needed more course to get by him but we got the same time and I was fifth. Matt continued his winning streak and won the AMBC #4.
We spent the next few days in Atlanta staying with some friends of Matt. We raced the Atlanta training crit on Tuesday night after watching the TdG in Macon. We were right on the line to see Gord Fraser take the win.
The training crit was really fast 50-60 the whole time. I felt pretty good and was off and on the front pretty much the whole time. Some Jittery Joes riders came out and I was happy that we could actually ride with them. On Wednesday we drove to Athens and raced a weekly time trial series that runs on the same course as Sunday's race. I was riding pretty well that night and won the TT, beating Matt by a minute. Jeff Shiley who was 2nd and Clemson was 3rd.
We raced another mountain time trial on Saturday that was one lap off the race course. The top 50 qualified for the fat tire crit in downtown Athens. (A sideshow preceding the pro road race). Matt and I were 2nd and 3rd separated by a few hundredths of a second. A local John Deer rider beat us by a shocking 40 seconds and also broke away off the line to solo into a win later that night at the FTC. Matt and I rolled across the line spinning our little 44-11s to get sixth and eighth. We finally finished changing our bikes around at 11:30, and were too tired to eat anything but cereal. It was text book race preparation.
I didn't feel particularly well getting up in the morning, and had a really bad start due to some inattention at the line. I got into the singletrack around 15th, and passed in a panic all the riders between me and the train of Jacob Fetty (John Deer), Thomas Turner (Cannondale) and Matt (Powerbar/Radical edge) by the end of the second lap. Jacob Fetty (apparently a TT specialist) blew up as we had hoped he would. I was about 10 seconds down on Matt when he had a horrible crash and cut his eyebrow open. He kept racing but the crash took it's toll. I rode most of the second half of the race in second until I caught Thomas Turner with four minutes to go on the last lap. I attacked him as hard as I could through a wide open field section and he didn't respond. I held on to the finish of my best result of the season to date. Matt finished fifth.
The course was totally dry and mostly really tight ST with some power climbs. My bike was eating it right up. Lots of log hopping and rooty sections.
Tomorrow we'll be driving back to Boone before racing in Ducktown Tennessee and heading home.”
Jamie
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