A-D Racing Miami Masters Rosewood Series Race number one

The Miami Masters Rosewood Series is a series of seven criterium races held in the Fort Lauderdale area from February to September. The first race of the series was held at Vista View Park in Davie, Florida. This park has the distinction of having the only hills in all of Broward County if not all of South Florida. This is because the park was built on an old landfill that had become a mountain of refuse. It was a Super Fund site and was rehabilitated and turned into a park in the seventies. The course is about one mile long and has two climbs and two fast downhills. It is a tough course.

I turned up for the masters fifty plus race on my Ultima Carbon Disc Limited Graz and joined about sixteen other riders. It was a fast group of riders and there were repeated attacks right from the start. Indeed, one guy went right from the gun and his teammates didn't chase so he was never seen again.  The field hammered the climbs pretty much each time and that thinned things out. Remarkably, every time there was a break that looked like it could get away, it would fizzle out and come back. 

This time around I refrained from burning matches on futile breaks and tried to conserve for the uphill finish. We went for 40 minutes or about 16 miles and gained an unheard of 1,400 feet of elevation. There were only five riders in the group with one kilometer to go and despite my effort to advance my position in the last 200 meters, I did not have enough power or momentum to make much progress. I finished 5th (the same as last year). It is a challenging course and easy to get too. It is a USA Cycling sanctioned event and the organizers do a good job starting things on time and making registration easy, but you have to be alert when racing as the course is open to other park users (joggers, walkers, bikes).