Monday 25 July 2011

Lost River, Lost Cookies, Lost Cause

The first time up Jenkins Hollow, the guy next to me, who is having a pretty incredible year of results, sounds like he's in the middle of a breach birth. I'm feeling none too spectacular. Normally, when a course is hard like that, I'll sort of keep a running tab of how many of the hard parts there are left to go, and how much they are hurting, to figure out how hard I can afford to ride. Jeff Cup this year, the "hard parts" were like non-existent so it was pretty much do what you want. The first day of Killington was great like that - clearly it needed to be metered, but there was breathing room. Saturday morning was like looking seeing a highway sign that say "Next Gas 65 Miles" and the "miles to empty" thing on your dashboard says "15." Just no way, Jose.

By the time we got back to 259, the moto ref pulled along side and said "there's only 10 of you left in the group." There might have been 27 or 28 guys at the start, but entire teams had been dropped in just one lap. Crazy stuff. The next trip up Jenkins came the call I just couldn't answer. I tt'd my ass off, and got so close to back in I could taste it. I passed the follow car. Bombed the Dispanet descent, saw that 3 (oh, yeah, the 10 man race totally exploded just as I got dropped) do indeed go a lot faster than one on that but kept it very close, and then they caught the scent of blood ahead on 259 and boom smoked up ahead. I could barely see them on Jenkins the next time up. The ultimate hurt was the two man TT that caught me on 259 a while later. Blah!

Anyhow, great work NCVC and Mike B and Jay and Audrey keeping this sucker alive. Excellent party, cold cocktails, etc. Got some good pictures of stuff I saw while riding my bike out there over the weekend. Will post later.

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