July 2, 2004 – With only a week between Beauce and the Road Nationals in
Kamloops, B.C. there wasn’t much to be done in terms of training. My week
was comprised of 1-1.5-hour training spins in the 39×17 on the bike paths
of Toronto, making for some great coffee rides. On the Friday (June 25) I
flew out to B.C. with my partner in crime and teammate, Matt Hansen, a
great travelling companion with a sharp wit and a penchant for launching
into long engrossing discussions about absolutely nothing; he would have
made a great writer for Seinfeld.

We stayed in the lovely Ranchland Motel, which unfortunately, like many of
the other cheap hotels on the strip paralleling Highway 1, didn’t have free
porn. Probably a good thing actually as in this way we were able to line
up on the Sunday fresh for the race; with free porn the tendency is for
the TV to stay on late into the evening. And so to race day. It had been
40C all week, unseasonable warm for June, but we were lucky as race day
dawned cool and slightly overcast – perfect racing conditions. This year
the course at the Nationals was incredibly challenging, a 10km circuit
with a 2km climb (that’s an approximation on my part) which had a couple
of nasty steep sections; I rode a 39×26 for the race and used it! The plan
was to get into the early break, in which the pace on the climb would be
steady rather than the surging that would go on in the peloton. Well
things went to perfection on this part of the plan as early in the race I
found myself in a good break of four, bridging across to some guys two
minutes up the road. Soon there was a good sized group clear, with Gord
Fraser, Svein Tuft and Eric Wohlberg eventually gracing us with their
company. In the end there were six of us away and there were moments when
the time board read forty seconds to the chase, but no one came close
enough to endanger our lead.

With a distance of 180km the race wasn’t a cake walk and everyone in the
break was suffering towards the close of the day. In the end the race came
down to the final climb with Alexandre Lavallee launching the attack that
made the final decision. I wasn’t able to follow – that was that and I rode
in for my finish. All in all it was a great weekend. I did the best that I
could, didn’t crack as I sometimes have a tendency to do and enjoyed an
incredible day of tough racing.


Andrew Randell, 2002 National Champion, rides for Jet Fuel Coffee www.jetfuelcoffee.com