We've just barely reached the midway point of the racing season, and I'm struggling. After failing, for the first time this season, to score even a single point at Jeff Cup last week, I had a terrible showing at the first of 3 events this weekend, and put myself out of contention before the action even got heated.
The Tour of Page County is a 3-part stage race comprising a road race on Saturday, followed by a TT and a crit on Sunday. The 3/4 group drew the short straw this year and got the earliest start time of 8:30a for the road race. Just like Jeff Cup, the race is ~60 miles, but unlike Jeff Cup, the signature climb on this course strikes fear into the hearts of mortals.
I'd done this course twice in the past. Once as a 5, and then the following year as a 4. Both times I'd come in 3rd in relatively small fields of ~30 or less. The 2nd time I did it on crit gearing and sat on the front for about half the race.
I felt much more confident going into this than I did Jeff Cup. And I'd been a good boy and not over-cooked it in the week before. No crushing group rides or anything crazy: just persistent low-level training. And a cough I'd been struggling with for the past month finally fully abated.
I even started the race smarter, rolling in the back 1/3 and moving up as gaps opened.
The first time over the climb wasn't too bad. My position allowed me to easily keep contact while sag climbers moved backward through the group, and there was no real surging. The heart rate crept up near the top, but the pace was very manageable. The descent on the other side, just like Jeff Cup, saw me sitting bolt upright to avoid running over the group. And then the finish climb, while horrible, still was no worse than the winery climb's pace the previous weekend. Good.
The 2nd climb was almost exactly the same, and I felt like I was in a good position to sit back and let the juniors do the work in the wind. I'd sink a bit on the finish climb and then roll back up to the front of the group in the valley.
Then, on the 3rd climb, all hell broke loose. The juniors attacked from the base of the climb to the top. I held on to the top, lost a few meters over the top, regained it on the descent, and completely blew up on the finish climb. Coming over the top, I saw the group riding away, easily 20 to 30 seconds ahead.
I caught another straggler, and we agreed OUR race was done. At only ~30 miles. I've never lost contact so early in a race.
Then a small group of riders caught us, and then another, and suddenly we were 10 riders. Someone took up the mantle of road captain, and we quickly established a reverse left-over-right rotation. 3 miles later, we could see the peloton. Another mile or so and we were back in the group. Big round of cheers all around.
Except we were close to the base of that climb again, and when we hit it, we hit it hard. The group pressed a pace every bit as tough as the previous lap's, and there was nothing I could do. I was 15 seconds adrift by the top of the main climb, and completely out of sight through the finish climb.
The 5th lap was sad, solitary, and slow. Amazingly, Strava shows that I actually gained back some time for a while, but was never within a minute. I caught and passed a few riders from different race groups, and since you can't draft off other races, rolled steadily on. By the time I'd reached the middle of the big climb, I was out of gears: 39x28 and struggling to turn 70rpm. By the finish climb I was weaving and just about to get off and walk the damn thing.
I crossed the line and asked the judges if I could stop. Initially they said no, but after a few seconds they relented and shouted that I could be done.
And that was it: I was pulled. I requested it, and to be honest I'm not sure I physically could have completed another lap, but that meant my stage race was already lost.
When results were posted, they confirmed that all of us who were pulled (which was almost half the field!) were penalized 10 minutes. Pulled does not equal DNF, fortunately, so I was able to continue to compete, but I'd be racing for peanuts.
I managed to pull up a couple of positions in Sunday morning's TT, catching my 30-second and 1-minute riders, but nothing spectacular. My heart just wasn't in it.
And the final event, the 45-minute speedway crit, was just about finishing. Since placement is on overall time, just finishing in the field would mean posting roughly the same time as the field, so I was pretty confident I would not lose any places in the overall if I just finished the damn race. And I did. The pace was just a tick under 28mph, there were no wrecks (though just barely), and I stayed in the back the whole time. I didn't get dropped. Yay.
When all was said and done, I'd finished 33rd for the weekend. I pulled up 6 positions from my road race finish, but it was not at all the weekend I'd hoped for.
But hey, now I can say I've done a stage race! And that's not bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment