The rain on the day of the 1981 Laguna Seca Road Race was dreadful. This event was usually the first real hot race day of the year (somewhat owing to the black asphalt), but we were treated with such rain that we wondered if we would ever make it to the race. The promoter was starting the races a couple hours late as many of the participants were arriving long after their scheduled start times.
Very few riders elected to ride the race which could not have had more than thirty participants, a real bath for the promoter who often saw fields in excess of a hundred on this wonderful course. So miserable and cold was the rain that none of the participants elected to warm up. My team was present in force, and we had five strong members of the team on the starting line. Also on the starting line was Bob Hammond, the previously unknown animal who had blown past me at the Stockton Time Trial (see Stockton Time Trial Story ). I had told my teammates about this guy, and now here he was in the flesh.
The race started slowly as nobody had warmed up, and nobody seemed anxious to make any great effort. For once, this race's hill was not like riding in an oven. Nearing the midpoint of the race, I noticed the pedaling signature of Bob Hammond indicate that he was getting ready to make an effort. I kept an eye on him, and was not surprised when he unsprung on a flat part of the course. Solo breakaway attempts on this part of the course have never been successful, but my team was taking no chances, so three of my teammates and I glued ourselves to Mr. Hammond.
The pack was complacent and simply did not react. It took little time to determine that they were simply going to let the five of us roll away. We rode together like a well oiled machine and were easily gaining fifteen seconds per lap on the pack. Bob Hammond rode well with us, yet we were nervous because none of us knew anything about his strengths and weaknesses (other than time trialing!), so something had to be done about him before the final sprint. He was a rather beefy guy, so the best estimate of his weakness would be the uphill. No words needed to be exchanged; team leader Alex Osborne simply had to give the nod to one of us and we would attack.
Bob easily took the bait. Each lap, it was another teammate's turn to twist the screws on the hill, watch Bob struggle to keep up, and then back off the gas on the downhill and wait for the others to catch up. Bob stubbornly chased down each one of us as we took our turn. When Bob finally began to crack, Alex gave the nod to each of us, and when we got to the hill, we all blasted off in unison, decisively leaving Bob for good. While we may have made it look easy, I know that each of us really respected Bob for his focus as well as his ability to chase a different rider each and every lap.
I felt that I had done my job well, and when Alex put on a remarkable show of strength with a lap and a half to go, I just said, "Have a good day" and watched him and teammate Guy Gelband ride away while teammate Ron Schmalfuss and I rode in a more relaxed manner towards the finish. The four of us finished seperately from one another, regrouped, then watched as a weary Bob Hammond finished looking pretty wiped out. We smiled and congratulated Bob Hammond for his good efforts; each of us fearing that in our next meeting with him that we might not be so lucky to have the strength in numbers.
It was a few weeks before any of us saw Bob again, and then came a fantastic surprise. Bob came to the starting line of a race wearing our club jersey! The man of few words looked at me, saw that I was clearly overjoyed, and said, "Well, I figure, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" Awesome! And Bob really put the fire to the coals as a workhorse of a teammate. Later that year, he was one of my teammates at the National Team Time Trial Championship. While he had the strength of teammate Bob Roll, he performed selflessly in a much quieter manner which was very much appreciated when I (as the third man) started to crumble in the last couple of miles.