Sunday 2 September 2012

Green Mountain 3 of 4


Today was the big road stage at GMSR. This is the third of four stages. Stage 1, the TT, went about as well as TTs ever go for me, which is not great. I managed to keep it somewhat close but despite very good power output the speed wasn't there. My position is, aerodynamically speaking, the opposite of Dave Zabriskie's. There are also techniques to TTs that I have not practiced. So power was big, speed not so much, placing bad but not too much time lost. Nate was just ahead of me, Callum was in a pretty good spot, not great but under the radar close.

Stage 2 was the circuit race. This is where I showed that I haven't raced since Reston in June. The whole "I feel like I'm going to die now" thing that happens in every race at some point seems a bit more dire when you haven't raced in over two months. It also didn't help that I was peeing when the race rolled out, so all James Bond like I had to toss on my dinner jacket and get the hell out of Dodge to catch the race before I completely missed everything. By the second of 3.75 laps I felt good, but the survey of the situation made it abundantly clear that no breaks would happen. Plan for the day was to basically tread water, avoid the big bummers, and see if any opportunities maybe came up. Before the second to last lap, Kalamazoo and I had the "so, what's up?" chat and he decided he wanted to do a late break if that looked amenable, or go for the sprint. I'm basically a happy dog when I've got a mission, so I guided him as well as I could for the rest of the race, which worked well since he got third. Hooray. I took the field finish and a good day for the two of us but a bad day for Nate who flatted.

Today got off to just an awesome start. Found out the "bibs" I put in my race bag was really a skin suit. No sweat, lots of dudes wear undershirts I will just think of it like that. Then I missed the feed because I'm an idiot. Then I flatted before the first KOM. Then I chased for 18:00 with one and a half other dudes and wouldn't you know it we made it back. Then I missed the neutral feed. WTF? Then I thought that the start of App Gap was Baby Gap because the distance measurement on the Garmin was not super accurate, so my positioning into the climb really sucked. App Gap really isn't that big, so I spent until 3k to go saving gas for some supposed yet to come climb, figuring the people who were left would regroup and we'd all be shiny and happy for the finishing climb. When I finally got the memo that we were ON the finishing climb, I started riding harder like you would do on a finishing climb. Seriously, if I wasn't such a freaking gigantic idiot who flats in literally pretty much every road race ever, what have you and all that.

I'm currently 30th, 3:10 down. GC place is pretty much locked in. It's been a really really fun experience and I'd definitely recommend the race to anyone. For sure. Just be a heck of a lot smarter about your approach than I've been.

No comments: