Argentina, Land of Silver. The reason the Spanish came all the way down here, the name derived from the Latin for Silver, Argentum, We rode, we rode, we rode….
Trivial fact, always in the back of my mind, sorry, that’s the sort of thing I remember.
Late Fall, Northern NJ: Slipping through the thinning summer, Rich and I start talking about how it will be when the snows set in, the holidays are all long past and the days are short.
“I know a place we can ride” says he, “where the days are long and warm, the steak is cheap, the wine is magnificent, the roads are empty, and; we can make millions while we sleep”. I was of course immediately interested. He now denies saying that last part.
Anyway, we made final arrangements for our trip down South. The plan was to meet the Colavita Professional team in San Luis, a small town in the province of San Luis, located roughly in the middle of Argentina. They would be there for the week before the Tour De San Luis, a local event held for the 5th year and one that has been drawing in solid two wheel talent from across South America and Europe each season.
The 2008 team, carefully forged by a brand new Director Sportif, our own racer turned team manager Sebastian Alexandre (aka Seba), combines North American and Argentine talent in a carefully balanced formula, a formidable mix of talents across the disciplines of this sport including Climbers, Sprinters, Time-Trialists and all round hard workers, the backbone “Domestiques” of every pro team.
We would check into the hotel in San Luis on Saturday and ride a few hours, eat, rest and prepare to spend the rest of the week riding with the team ahead of the first stage of the Tour on Tuesday the following week. That was the idea anyway…
Diary entries follow; mostly verbatim. Enjoy
Sunday Jan 13, 08
The 3:10 to San Luis
Seem to have been traveling forever.
Last minute Friday, Aerolineas cancels our flight. Rich calls. “We ride the Pampas No Matter What Happens” is the rally. He rises at 4 am and with some long distance persuasion of only the sort a lawyer can dish, gets us on a series of alternate connecting flights through JFK, Atlanta, Beunos Aires, Mendoza and then a bus to San Luis.
Friday the whole (altered) plan kicks into gear, I pick up Rich, we meet Andy from the team who will travel with us, we ride to JFK and prepare to put the whole show in the air, 5 oversize bike boxes included to make the logistics just that bit more tricky.
After missing a passport, interminable flight delays, holdups, security checks and rechecks but amazingly; no lost luggage, we all meet up in Mendoza at the local airport just outside the town around midday Saturday. It is incredibly hot. We are 30 miles from the mighty Andes and can see them looming clearly in the distance. Everyone is in good spirits as we board the bus. I finally get to meet some of the superstars of our sport in person.
Now is a moment, ensconced comfortably in shorts (I just had to change) and basking in the breeze of an open window, that we are bussed at a steady 100 km/h East through groves of Olives flanked by tall Poplars, open acres of grapes, and tiny roadside hamlets. We leave behind the Vineyards of Argentina headed up to the Chaparral of San Luis and thence to an 11 pm steak dinner. I think of Napoleon and the orderly French roads Poplar’d, the gallic taint inescapable here, the Spanish littoral translated.
I sit across from Seba trading odd connections we share about this vast open country. The Perones, the sea battle and sinking of the “Admiral Graff Spee” after a dogged pursuit by British warships so carefully and triumphantly described in Churchill, the local politics and the provincial governor, Bruce Chatwin’s classic travel companion "In Patagonia", and, more close to home, my memory of Seba two years ago when, as Team Colavita’s star rider he laps the whole field inside the first 15 in the tour of Maplewood and takes the race home.
This land spawns exceptional riders, they train on the same busy and windy highways we are streaming down now and, they all seem very friendly, down to earth and remarkably likable, a refreshing change from some of the roadies I have come across.
For some idle moments in Mendoza’s quiet little airport I had logged onto the trickling Wireless Internet service and tried to locate us on Google Maps.
Answer came there none. We are thus in the middle of nowhere, so much so the Maps shows the whole area as a non-descript grayness defined only by the margin of the Alps on the left and ocean to the right. When Google comes up empty-handed, an immutable law of modern nature is violated. Clearly we have moved beyond the pale, and this is what it looks like.
If I wanted a place to pull me briefly clear of the everyday, this has so far exceeded all expectations on that score, there is nothing else to do but ride, ride and eat.
Late that night we get into town. Dinner is actually at 12:30am, the town is still vibrant at this time, even now, Sunday night !!! Then a quick run into the darkness to drop Rich and I. We are staying at the Hotel Protrero de Los Funes about 25 minutes out of town. We check in and crash, each in a rather comfortable room.
Monday Jan 14, 08
Flat, False Flat?
When I finally get out of bed in the late am, the view is startling. The hotel is built on a Swiss lake framed by the mountains of Arizona, a combination I have not seen before; a lake in what looks a like a desert. Then I recall all the Poplars and Willows we saw the day before, there is obviously a lot of water here, just not all the time.
A lazy buffet breakfast follows with miniature sticky-sweet Croissants, baked biscuits, fruit salad and of course, the very good local coffee. Afterwards, Rich and I ride East and out towards Trepiche. The road climbs steadily for the first 15K, not steep but not much relief either. When we reach the upper plain the wind is slightly in our favor, the flat looks sweet but is a liar.
We probably go a bit harder than needed. On the turn around we see a flash of red and green go into the roundabout and suddenly we are in the middle of the whole team and busily pedaling away back home with our new-found buddies. We are going easy but then a long roller comes up with a strong cross wind. No one stops talking, neither does anyone slow down but I am silent and now suddenly uncomfortable watching my HR inexorably climb upward. Within 5 mins I hit 177 and the hill was not quitting so Rich and I did.
The guys just kept rolling along as we fell off. It seemed so effortless to them and yet we were over our limit. They ride 35 hours a week in peak season.
Tuesday Jan 15, 08
Mirador
This was to be a long day and it was hot as we got out late.
We rode 62 miles, mostly slow climbs at 2-4% but then we hit the "Mirador" at 50 miles. This is a 5K climb up though a mountain pass at 10% with some sections maybe 12%. Not as steep as some of the climbs we have in NJ but way longer. I had been eating and drinking regularly as I went (it was about 90F and very dry) and I popped a Gu at the foot of the climb and then eased into the first mile or so gradually working the legs to that state of equilibrium where the pain goes away, the heart stabilizes and the power is consistent. This is that moment in a long climb when others usually take off a little harder and then have to ease off as they over do it. I always ease in to find my rhythm and then slowly raise my tempo to the ceiling. The boys were somewhere behind us and after the first mile I started to get very comfortable pulling a steady 260w.
Using a power meter is so helpful in these cases because I now know what is sustainable work and what is not. I can hold 260 for an hour and as long as the HR stays low I can go a bit higher. This climb pitches from grade to grade so you need to change output as you go to try and hold a steady cadence and speed, the whole climb being done in 1st gear. Concentrating on form, keeping an eye on the meter to stay inside 300w and watching the HR, I was soon starting to actually enjoy myself and the incredible views as I inched up the road at 8.6 mph.HR at 174, 9 beats off maximum.
Breathing regularly, nothing but the stinging of sweat in my eyes to bother me, I peek down the switch backs and see the boys coming up a quarter mile back. They are moving fast and I raise my tempo to try hold them off a while longer. The support van passes me with a honk and three minutes later the boys come by me at a fast walking speed, probably 11 mph as a group.
They are riding cleanly but not talking. If was to ride at that speed I would last for about a minute and then explode. They must be working too. At the front is Anthony Colby, he won the first-ever Green Mountain Prolog that I competed in by posting an amazing 29:47 minutes to climb the Appalachian gap. I did it in 36. What other sport allows you to play with the Pros? In the last 300M I get out of the saddle and push it. HR passes 180 but I arrive at the top in style.
At the top we regroup, the view is spectacular and goes on for miles across the plain of the West. We get water, snacks and a few minutes to recover before heading down. The descent is amazing and roads are great. We will do this one again.
In the Lobby the sign advising of Massage services had caught my eye a few times, indeed the name of the masseuse had struck me as interesting, Carina Levin, clearly a Russian removed. It took just a quick phone call to engage her for an hour and have the soreness gently ease out of the quads while I lay back and dreamt of climbs I might do, could do and should do. Then I thought about how much faster I would be after this massage…one can only dream.
Wednesday Jan 16, 08
There are many kinds of Steak.
Had a great Argentine Asado (BBQ) dinner last night.
Our team includes a chef skilled in the secrets of this ancient form of Pampas feasting. The hotel in town (The Aiello) were the team stays has agreed to lend us their BBQ for the evening. This is unique in that the cooking is done over wood embers regularly extracted from a small fire kept burning at one end of the flat grill surface and raked under the grilling racks while large and sumptuous cuts of steak, steak chiseled from a cow that never saw a corn cob in it’s life, are grilled to perfection in the fragrant heat.
We rode to town this morning from the Protrero. The driving is a bit erratic and god forbid you have an accident, I suspect the medical facilities......I am getting to like Siestas and dinners at 9 pm. I saw a guy and his wife and little kids up by the lake our hotel is on fishing at 1:30 am on Saturday, “Never in New Jersey” was all I could think.
The roads are filled with Ford Falcons, Renault 4, 6's and 12's, and old Fiat 127's (all of which I grew up with in Ireland in the 70’s so it was a little eerie) plus a few Fiat 600's. I was thinking that they basically drive a car until it dies here or, judging by the clouds of exhaust they all spew, a little after that.
I saw a Ford Falcon this morning that looked as though it had been retrieved from a wrecking yard. The town is a grid of streets and their intersections, most having no lights or right-of-way signage, just first come first served or, biggest wins. On a bike this is a little nerve wracking but we are getting used to it.
The Pro team are riding a mix of last years and this years Jamis bikes. The new Jamis in particular is a startling engineering achievement. I picked up the just-assembled model being ridden by Alexandro this morning.
At 12 lbs it is ridiculously light and stiffer than you can believe. I have this frame ordered as I get an astonishing deal through the team.
This evening I offered to go and do a little shopping to prepare for the Asado. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to pick up some stuff for the kids and see what a real store is like down here. I bummed a ride into town with Gustavo and his wife Marianna. They live in Buenos Aires and so are a little out of place here in their stylish black Golf with shaded windows. We drive across town and on the way chat about Gustavo’s Olympic days. He competed in two succesive Olympics as a national track champion and enjoyed it but the results were not so good. I can only imagine how much stress he must have been under.
We pull into the parking lot of a huge store, it was, you guessed it: Walmart! No wonder there was not a single store selling products that could be carried away in the town, everyone was now shopping here. Even those who could not afford cars as was clear from the line of Taxis by the front door.
Walmart, as ever, sold everything. From car tires to goat cheese. Local wines to digital cameras. Once, only the providence of retailers like Harrods of London or Macys NYC, the sale of everything from under one roof is now the defining trait of Walmart. I stocked up on a few items for home and found a surprisingly decent selection of cheeses and salamis, all good for the evenings feasting.
Pretty much every part of the cow came our way at some point during that evening. I have a memory of Anthony’s face after he tried one particularly flavorful organ, “It’s very gamey!” he says. We all burst out laughing. Gamey is not the half of it but most plates were cleaned off.
The talk was of racing and training. I spent much of it gathering tips from Kyle on good sprint training regimens. He also said “mistakes are good, you learn nothing without making mistakes” something I think I could learn by.
In 2007 Colavita had signed David Mcann, the top Irish rider of 2006 and three time holder of the Irish TT record. He had been racing with some of these same lads last year and although the team did not do too well in races overall, they had picked up a broad knowledge of Irish racing culture and also British comedy. This last as it seems that Mcann had been a great fan of downloaded UK TV shows, watched in the endless downtime of rest between races.
For the much of the evening, Andy who had memorized some classic skits, entertained us with merriment from "Bo' Selecta", a show whose UK comedic value seemed to have played very well to these young American athletes.
Friday Jan 18, 08
The Last Day of our Acquaintance.
So Friday was our last day of riding but we made it really count. It was, by way of the descriptive two wheel vernacular, a 'hard' day with a total of three ascents of the Mirador.
The first, my best ever, was completed in 19.5 minutes at 283 watts average. The remaining efforts were a little easier. At the top we were persons of great curiosity to the local day trippers, so much so that one family asked us to pose with their three tiny girls for a photo and then asked if we were in the Tour D' France. They all knew of the upcoming Tour D' San Luis and really seemed excited by our sport and the bright Colavita team Jerseys.
When told that their very own Argentine-born Alexandre Brajo was riding for us they knew well who he was and were very impressed. We also rode a good while with the team this day, they too being out for a Hard day under the direction of Seba though he had already taken off for Buenos Aires earlier in the morning.
For us a hard day was 3.5 hours with lots of climbing, for them, almost 6 hours with more climbing and they would do several of these days back to back. Just one was enough for us. Anthony Colby told me later he had slipped up the Mirador at an easy 370 watts. At 20 lbs lighter than I and almost 100w more going easy, you can imagine how fast he climbs in anger.
A lazy afternoon and massage followed the climbing followed by another superb dinner at 9:30, as always. This time the venue was "Les Robles" (The Oak in San Luis) a place Rich knew well and for good reason, the service was excellent and food quality matched it. Another fine local Red was carefully chilled under Rich's direction in an ice bucket. This noted because they will by default serve red at room temp here (and it is 90F) and give you ice to add to the glass.
We left a little after midnight and gave up our table to the family of five who had been waiting. Once again, not one child of the three present was past their sixth year.
Saturday Jan 19, 08
The City of Fair Winds.
“The History of Buenos Aires is written in it’s telephone directory. Pompey Romanov, Emilio Rommel, Crespina D.Z. de Rose, Ladislao Radziwil, and Elizabeth Marta Callman de Rothschild-five names taken at random from among the R’s - told a story of exile, disillusion and anxiety from behind lace curtains.”
“In Patagonia” by Bruce Chatwin.
Who could ever forget an introduction like that? It figures that Bruce was the type of guy who spent time reading telephone directories. Still, in truth, there is some of the cultural genome written there.
We arrived in Buenos Aires late afternoon yesterday and met Seba at the regional airport. This airport sits right on the bay and we came out of the terminal into bright sunlight, breezes, and the sight of an immense brown ocean dotted with fleeting white caps and sails scudding in the far distance. I asked Seba why the ocean was so brown. "That is not the ocean, that is the River" he said.
The Rio Plate drains much of Northern Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil. It flows into the Atlantic here, pouring out of a vast mouth some 38 km across, still fresh water or, on this day, not so fresh owing to the storms of summer drenching the city throughout the last week.
Buenos Aires is in an autonomous city in the state of Buenos Aires. It has the government and general authority to lead the nation but it's authority is not president in all matters. Most recently the nation decided to add an hour to daylight savings as did North America. A few weeks later, San Luis, a region that gained little by this change and lost a useful hour of early light, moved the hour back. The back story is that last year the governor of San Luis ran for president but was defeated. He has not forgotten it seems.
We stay a few hours at Seba’s wife's parent's retirement home on the edge of the city. Carla's parents live at the Christian Brother's college nearby where they have been caretakers for 30 years but will retire in a year. Federal in style, in front of the house the garden is a small postage stamp of grass with a small potted Olive tree and some roses.
The interior of the home is neat, elegant and spare. It has two small bedrooms with very high ceilings railroad off a kitchen which also opens to a small sitting area, a small bathroom and a covered side patio. The floors are all cool tile, the overly tall door frames are of stained wood, each with a transom, the external doors and window frames are black painted steel and have elegant geometric shuttering screwed into the wall for security. There are five locks with large, complex and confounding brass keys required in sequence to secure ingress.
The feel is distinctly Spanish with that hint of the Moor still present half a millennium and a world away. Art and craft tell a tale otherwise un-guessed. The bookshelves are lined with historical sets of some age covering Greece, Rome, Art etc.
We steal a few hours rest, a cup of tea and then we go to Seba's new apartment currently being prepared for the imminent arrival of his already-named first born son; Thomas.
Seba is fluent in English, good natured, thoughtful, organized and, most importantly, a great friend and mentor to his riders. They are handpicked and matched by him. With this team he tells us later, Colavita will have it's best year ever on the Pro circuit. He seems perfectly formed for this job and talks of it with gusto. An amazing dinner on the newly renovated waterfront of the downtown followed with Rich, Seba, his wife;Carla and Seba's remarkably trim and fit 73 year old father Anthony Alexandre;who drove there to meet us.
The waterfront restaurant is beautifully designed within a section of an old red brick warehouse, one of dozens now renovated and thriving in the flush of newly minted life that has rushed back to this section of the city. In complement, the gangling pre-container dock cranes of the former age remain in place to yaw like great Giraffes out over the edge of the stone pier. Brightly painted they make impressive sculptures, monuments to the rich history of this waterway and the part it played in the glory of the Argentine.
Further up the dock is a restored three-masted tall ship whose rear gunwales and stout funnels give witness to a short period in time when wind was just bowing to steam, wood hulls to steel flanks and Argentina's naval frigates were it's best and only defense.
Defending the life blood, the vast agricultural bounty of a new nation, in size 7th largest in the world, flowing out almost exclusively through the port of this city. That flow has fueled 300 years of almost non-stop growth and prosperity. Now, at over 12 million inhabitants, Buenos Aires ("Fair Winds") is home to a half of this nation's very mixed peoples, the rest are scattered over it's Pampas, nestled under the gigantic mountains and basking on the verdant Andean Alpine pastures.
It is by far the largest city of the southern hemisphere. Driving to dinner earlier in the evening I was struck by the immensity of this metropolis. The outskirts seemed endless. A rolling parade of medium rise apartment buildings, hard by the super highway comes at you from both beams for almost an hour before you finally reach Ave Julio. This majestic entryway, at over 300m across, is the widest central avenue of any City I have ever seen. Here the buildings are more commercial and financial in their utility. They rival the newest and finest anywhere else in the world but they mesh with a layer of complexity, a sense of style, an old world feeling atypical of the Americas.
All around in this capital district there is stamped the timeless grace of the European Diaspora. It has molded and spoken for all of the architecture, the elegant streets and the line of the rooftops. Beaux Arts, Belle Epoque, Classic Italianate and Greek revival all cluster majestically under the same gleaming glass towers you might see in New York. Paris of the South you might describe it as but no, it is much bigger and bolder than even Paris. Perhaps when Paris meets Chicago it gets you some of the way to Buenos Aires.
The new president lives near here in a grand pink limestone mansion, just completed and resplendent with Mansard roof, it is a perfect architectural complement to the magnificent Beaux Arts capital building down the road.
Sebastian; his father and his father before that were all national champions on the track here. Like them, he also had to leave and travel the world to find his way. In 2000 he was a great in Argentina but, like his friends and teammates on the national team; local fame was not a fortune.
On the Internet he saw that in New Jersey USA, there was to be a great race sponsored by Colavita. He called his friends and then emailed the race organizer. He wanted to come but could not afford the entry fees. Rich responded. "If you can come you will race for free". Seba got his friends organized and they came over with their bikes.
In that, the very first race in North America, Seba won and his friends took most of the top ten spots. It was a walk in the park for them. The other racers were amazed and somewhat fearful. Colavita was stunned by the performance and signed them up immediately. Arrangements were hastily made for the team to stay in the US for the local racing season and in the homes of John and Rich. They raced that season as Team Colavita Elite and won almost everything they entered with a blend of power, skill, daring, track experience and an infectious, good humored attitude. A year later the team went professional, the rest is history.
Some of the North Americans that Seba first raced against are here with us now in Argentina training under him for Colavita.
Dinner concludes with a long discussion of the personal commitment and willingness to sacrifice all that comes from a racer whose team mates are first and foremost, his friends, Seba believes that this is the defining aspect of his team this year and this will bring the extra 10% it takes to have a truly great season.
We exit around midnight and Anthony volunteers to drive us around the city. We wish Seba and Carla all the best and pile into Anthony's shiny new car. Anthony takes us to Ave Mayo and then to the Cafe Tortoni. The Tortoni, a grand dame of a coffee shop, is 150 years old and is like an Opera house inside. Replete with mirrors, paintings, a Tiffany stained glass ceiling 18' above and oak paneled walls, in every portrait on the wall, each small piece of art high above, every booth and corner you can feel the age and the influence that has been forged here.
There was once a time in the 1700’s when coffee houses like this appeared in all over Europe and, in the fizzling and over stimulated thinking that coffee inspires, a great period of modern financial ingenuity was born. In this place one still feels a little of the energy and greatness of that age, the crucible of Argentine politics and power seems evident. As Anthony explains later, in the old times when the President finished work each day, he would come here in the evening, sit down with his family and drink a smooth silky coffee. Just as we do now.
From the back there is the intriguing and seductive drill of Tango music coming from the Tango room. Sadly, it is booked up but I have a great chat with a sweet girl who is studying "Tourismo" by day while taking tickets to the show by night. She tells me of the Tango show and the fact that on any night the house is full. “Reservacions only Senor”.
The dancers are nearby taking a break. He is short, immaculately groomed and very Spanish looking. He wears a perfectly fitting and very smart black pin stripe single breasted suit. He has a white tie on a black shirt and his hair is slicked to the shape of his head with gel. She is even shorter, wears a short black satin dress with black stockings and shiny black patent leather dancing shoes. She has a tiny lick of blood on her ankle, perhaps where the heel of the other shoe caught the skin as it snapped past on the way to the floor.
They suddenly jump up and rush in to begin their routine. The music grows more strident, the Violins begin the marching dance. We enjoy the mirrors, talk racing, talk tango and drink espresso. Anthony regales us with stories of his life as a professional racer, first as Argentine national track champion and then later as world track champion.
In his fiery years he traveled to all the worlds major cities and in the 50’s was a participant in the 6 day indoor Velodrome events common to the sport everywhere. Oslo, Paris, New York, London, Korea, Tokyo.
Wherever there was a Velodrome and cash prizes there were itinerant athletes from around the world and Anthony. Around the edge of the velo track the pundits wagered on the racers over 12 hour day of drinking, eating and gambling. Every few laps the PA would announce the prize for the first man over the line in the next lap. That was when Anthony knew how his next few minutes would go and what he would be at. The racers rode until they could not ride any more. Anthony came away with pocketfuls of cash.
In '59 he came to Madison square garden and earned himself $15,000 US in a week and so, like his father before him, he went back to Buenos Aires with the prize money and bought houses.
We pay our bill and head out of the mirrored elegance of this place. We pass tables of women who look like they have stepped out of a Parisian movie poster. We spend another hour driving around Buenos Aires. We drive the Ave de Mayo, the Ave Julio, the Ave Cordoba where we see theatre and opera on every street.
As we head back out on the long road home I think for a brief moment that I am in a long lost but very great European capital. Somehow cut adrift in one wrenching moment of recent history and soon forgotten on northern soils, slowly fading from the written record, the great metromass, adrift and slowly southbound on the fair winds, finally nestled in the bay of the Plate. There it ran aground on the shores of the Pampas and rooted. Now, a last outpost of European enlightenment, vigor and culture, it stands sentry before the vast empty lands of Patagonia and ahead of the endless Antarctic winters.
We get home and lie down for a brief two hours of sleep before Carla’s brother is to come and take us to the airport. It is hot, I am awash with thoughts...I paint some words into my memory as I slowly descend to slumber.
Another moment passed, another chapter closes. The world keeps turning. Morpheus comes, the last day in Argentina ends slowly, softly, sadly.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
The Green Mountain Stage Race: Stage 4
GMSR Stage 4, Sept 3, 2007
The Burlington 6 corner crit....!
53 starters
1 Tobi Schultze 0:35:09
2 Troy Kimball 0:00:05
7 John Funk 0:00:05
10 Claude Samson 0:00:05
17 Joe Straub 0:00:05
23 Lee Mestres 0:00:05
37 Paul Carbonara 0:00:05
43 Tony Settel 0:00:05
46 John Tomlinson pulled at 11
47 Michael Joseph pulled at 11
48 Kevin Haley pulled at 11
Ok, this is always the stage that gets me. I have yet to be able to finish this last leg of the event and this year was no different. This is the event where the pure crit racers can shine, all those long suffering fast-twitch guys who have been slogging it out over the climbs, finally get their day.
Points
1 Claude Samson 359
2 Troy Kimball 340
3 John Funk 335
4 Joe Straub 335
37 Paul Carbonara 189
40 Tony Settel 182
42 Lee Mestres 180
48 Kevin Haley 111
49 Michael Joseph 106
50 John Tomlinson 88
The Burlington 6 corner crit....!
53 starters
1 Tobi Schultze 0:35:09
2 Troy Kimball 0:00:05
7 John Funk 0:00:05
10 Claude Samson 0:00:05
17 Joe Straub 0:00:05
23 Lee Mestres 0:00:05
37 Paul Carbonara 0:00:05
43 Tony Settel 0:00:05
46 John Tomlinson pulled at 11
47 Michael Joseph pulled at 11
48 Kevin Haley pulled at 11
Ok, this is always the stage that gets me. I have yet to be able to finish this last leg of the event and this year was no different. This is the event where the pure crit racers can shine, all those long suffering fast-twitch guys who have been slogging it out over the climbs, finally get their day.
I had a great dinner the night before and as usual lots of sleep. headed out very early for the 50 mile drive North to Burlington. This is such a beautiful city in the fall, perched here upon the shores of Lake Champlain. I hear the winters are a bit brutal though.
A warm up on the trainer starting 90 minutes before the event and then into the starting pen with number attached, gel packs in pocket and a serious sense of foreboding.
This circuit is very technical with 6 corners, two of them being off-camber and one is on some rather hairy brick surface that I had earlier watch bring down another racer as he swept across it at full tilt. The killer in all this is the long climb on the main section to the finish line. You crash into this after a fast and hairy downhill and sharp left hander. The sudden and harsh climb wears you down and after half a dozen of these I was starting to really feel it.
The leaders were pulled out of the crowd of us and given front place billing before the start. The start was, as ever, like letting a bunch of cats out of a bag. I fought on fine for the first few laps but after lap three I could no longer hold onto the pace.
After a few more laps, I found I was unable to breathe well and was unable to raise my HR (same thing that happened in '05) to a useful level. A few laps more and I was pulled as the front of the field was closing on me from behind.
The winner, Tobi Schulze, pulled off a remarkable coup. He went off the front about half way through and simply could not be pulled back in. On a course like this a solo breakaway is possible but requires enormous strength as the chasing field is frenzied and very fast. He did it anyway and came from nowhere to upset the Kimball/Funk/Samson triumvirate with a five second lead on the field across the line. Well done Tobi!!!
The results below are the overall GC standings when all the dust had settled. Regardless of Tobi's great victory, his prior days of racing had not been to his advantage and he did not make the top three.
The points lead is telling with Funk and Straub making the same points though in different races.
My own showing is a little light, mostly because I lost over ninety points for not finishing the Crit. Had I been able to stay in the field I would have made about 200 points overall putting me in the top 35 or so.
My goal for this year was simple, finish top 50 for my category at Green Mountain. This I managed but only by the slimmest of margins.
Next Year in Vermont.......
Final GC Standings:Points
1 Claude Samson 359
2 Troy Kimball 340
3 John Funk 335
4 Joe Straub 335
37 Paul Carbonara 189
40 Tony Settel 182
42 Lee Mestres 180
48 Kevin Haley 111
49 Michael Joseph 106
50 John Tomlinson 88
Monday, September 3, 2007
The Green Mountain Stage Race: Stage 3
GMSR Stage 3, Sept 2, 2007
The Appalachian Gap
65 miles, two massive climbs and KOM points.
60 starters
1: Claude Samson 2:59:51
2: Joe Straub +11
4: John Funk +2:37
6: Troy Kimbal +3:11
33: Michael Joseph +6:29
53: Lee Mestres (Mambo's) +20:55
54: Paul Carbonara +21:45
55: Tony Settel (Deno's) +21:45
57: John Tomlinson (Deno's) +25:08
59: David Hudson (Mambo's) 34:56
This is the major event of the weekend, it is the leg burner, the heart splitter, the ultimate race of truth, in short, it is the one day everyone dreads, climber, sprinter, old and young, this one is tears, agony and anguish for all, even the very best among us, and we have the very best among us, will be pushed to their limit and beyond.
The race starts with a long neutral downhill calculated to cool the warmed up legs right off before racing begins on route 100.
After that it is a fast and mostly flat road race with sprint points at 19 miles, then a while later into the Middlebury gap, a feed zone and then a series of ever higher climbs taking us over the ancient Appalachian mountain chain topped by KOM (King of the Mountain) points and rapidly down to start a long Northern run up it’s Western flank that ends only when we swing East again and climb first, the Baby gap, merely the foothills and then the mighty Appalachian gap with 5km of climbing, the last 3 being at about 12%, the very last one being the meanest with a final pitch to 20% right at the end to the top and the finish line. This is a race of attrition.
And so, after a reasonably successful day yesterday, I had again taken the rest of the day pretty lightly, the only entertainment being to stop in at the wonderful craft fair that had set up at Kenyon’s field and was closing down as I rolled up. I chatted for a while with an Irish/Jewish stone artist whose work was displayed around her stall on various forms of robust but clearly groaning easel. Her work was simple and involved etching rock with sand blasting and then polishing, too heavy to carry home though.
I retired after that to Jay’s restaurant in Waitsfield and demolished all sorts of fine things from the menu. This is one of those times when you can eat as much as you like at any time of day, it will all be burnt off anyway. Also good to note here, having had a massage, I was careful to spend as little time on my feet as possible so as to gie the legs the rest they need for tomorrow.
Up at 6;45, up to Mt Ellen ski resort and ready for the start. I look for Ciaran Mangen but cannot find him. We are off at 9:00 am and rolling for some 4 miles before we hit Route 100 south. Once we do things pick up nicely and there is no time for chat before the attacks come. Again, knowing who is doing the attacking can make all the difference.
Troy and Tony make a break again only to be caught within minutes. Then another three go up the road and this one looks real. There is a sprint point at 19 miles and this is obviously where they are headed. For a while we do little other than match their tempo and let them hang out there in the wind. Then we slow right down for no good reason though my guess is because Troy’s two team mates have gone to the front and are trying to hold us back.
The trio are now a quarter mile away and their lead is widening, they are not slowing down for anything. We are just rolling along at 15 mph when suddenly, with a flick of it’s helmeted mane, a cacophony of gear shifts and the rumble of suddenly engaged tires, the whole damn mess accelerates like a roller coaster and is instantly flying along at 35 mph in hot pursuit.
This comes just as we dive into the gorges and canyons on route 100, perhaps one of the nicest bits of road to ride down anywhere. This stretch has everyone in top gear and lying flat as can be while swooping through the curves at close to 50 mph.
For some reason fear has left me, now I am steadily passing others who are more cautious here and, sitting higher, have engaged air braking with their bodies. Not me, flat as I can be, elbows as close as I can get them, saddle in my stomach and chin on the stem I am passing them one by one. Before I realize it I am up with the three who escaped, they are now caught and another three come down with me.
I see now I have reached the maximum echelons of kinetic energy of this pack at this moment. Right here is here the action is as the six sprinters and I jockey for a good position at 45mph while the rest of the field hangs back. What the hell am I doing here? I wonder; the answer comes back sure and simple, having fun, what else.
We round the last bend of tree, all keenly looking for the sprint marker and suddenly there it is; a huge red banner on the right hand side of the road with a tripod and a camera. Their off, John leads out Tony, Troy jumps on his wheel and two others take a different line. I accelerate while keeping back so I don’t have to stand and I stay placed right behind them. Then they let it all go and the big men go flying off the lead outs, Tony, Troy, two more, it is mano e mano on wheels, each man working his legs, back neck and elbows, mouth in a rictus of power and anger bombing for the line. Troy takes it by a pencil width and it is over. Suddenly we are all friends again and rolling along chatting about what just happened like it was walking the dog.
Not withstanding this happy moment, two more guys leap off the front and we let them go. They are going for the KOM points up the Middlebury gap and no one seems to care.
We swing right into Middlebury and up past the feed zone. I have no food or water coming having packed two 16 oz bottles with Accelerade and a spare bottle of pure water in my jersey pocket. I have also packed a lot of Gel (4), two granola bars and about 4 inches of my secret fruit and nut biking loaf. I am sure this will be enough fuel and given the morning is cool I think I am in good shape for fluids though it will be close.
The real climbs of the Middlebury gap start right after the feed zone. Indeed no sooner have those last cheerful faces passed us by then the awful truth hits hard as riders leap to their feet to attack the surging hills now before us. Mid pack me; I start my inevitable drift backwards. I cannot help this and have to acknowledge that while my climbing is better than it has ever been, I am simply outclassed by these guys both in years of racing and their specialization.
For a while I am at the very back watching people slowly pull away from me but then a funny thing happens, and it always does. Those closest to me start coming back to me, a bit like a yo yo with one bounce. Now I am passing Lee, John T and others I have been riding with all week are next to me, head down, groaning and wheezing as they force the pedals around and I slowly pass them. A little up the road I see a guy in a Target training outfit, he is stopping to pee. I am impressed by his confidence that he can get back on after a stop like that.
I move on up the hills, I can still see the main group, they are strung out. John Funk is still with them so it is not too bad. A rider comes by me and I get on his wheel. He rides steadily and just at my limit so we ride up together wordlessly in the growing heat. I finally see the top, it is another 100M and so, as usual, I stand up and sprint to the top in an effort to make this part end sooner. As usual I surprise my self how much kick I can muster after 15 minutes of howling muscles but no matter, I am toasted at the top.
Two riders come by me then, they are the ones I just passed. We form a paceline and agree we have to haul ass now to get back on. We start 30 second pulls and we go like thunder down the other side of the gap into Ripton. Another rider joins us here, it is Mr target Training looking for a ride to the front. I get impatient. I can see riders ahead, we simply have to get to them, I fly past the current lead guy in the paceline and redline myself in an effort to close the gap. Sweat is pouring off me and spattering on my legs, the road is curvey and fast with a good surface.
Round the next corner we are into Ripton, there is traffic in the race here, the closest vehicle is the 40+ follow van and then some cars are between. Never mind that, I am completely fearless here again and simply race up to back of the van as it goes into a right hander. I hold off as I cannot see around the van and don’t want to take chance. Once the road opens up I take off and pass the van. Someone shouts at me, not sure what they say. I get down on the bars again and the road out of Ripton proves to be every bit as fast as I recall it to be.
Around the next corner I hit a bunch of bumps and I hear a crash behind me, damn, my spare water bottle has gone, bugger ! I keep going, the riders ahead are just within reach. A short uphill now and I pedal like a maniac and catch them and do. We slow up here for a few minutes before putting it back into gear again and pounding down the last stretch. All I can recall is my first ever GMSR and how, when I got dropped in Middlebury I could not get back on, that was not going to happen again.
Flat out gain through the bends with a tail of riders behind me we fly into the hard right hander that marks the end of the descent. Flags are being waved at us but I know this corner and I know I can take it fast.
We round the corner and there, lo and behold, Allah be praised, thanks be to god, there they are, and not just a small off-the-back group but the whole god damn pack!! It is a miracle. We all congratulate each other and join up with the rest of the field in time to eat and chat a bit before the pace picks up again, boy was that lucky.
The pace picks up as we head out towards Bristol, it comes and goes as various bodies try and break but nothing sticks. We round the bend up to the Bristol notch road, a short surly 20% climb, enough to wake everyone up here and then, onto the: Dirt Road…yes what a treat here in Vermont. 2 miles of hucks, yucks and shucks with pebbles, glass and washboard surfaces thrown in. What were they thinking of?
John Funk pounds through here at 26 mph and we all have to follow (he told me later) holding on for dear life as tires pop left and right, bottles fly out of cages and small bits of plastic whose purpose has never been ascertained fly off every bike that had one. All my bits thankfully stay attached, even my taped on Powertap and I stay attached to the bike though it is very hard at times. I will not need a massage tonight I inform the white-knuckled rider to my right.
This ends with a short sharp run up into Bristol and then on out route 125 towards the baby gap. This is uneventful and I feed on the fruit and nut roll with difficulty as it is very fast for no good reason I think until I see that two men are off and Kevin Haley, Joe Straub’s team mate is looking lonely. “Where’s Joe” I ask but I already know. Kevin nodded on down the road. Sure enough Joe has gone and gone hard, we are not even trying to catch him.
We reach the baby gap and begin to climb. This group is now down from 60 starters to about 45 and two are up the road. That means if I fall off here at the very back I will just make GC points, I need to do a bit better than that I realize. The baby gap starts out pretty soft, 4%, then 5%, then 6% then back to 5% and lots of meandering along the river, all well and good. The tempo is high though and, interestingly, we pick up speed as we go up the climbs and slow down on the flats. Riders start coming unglued; I see them drop back as I am again at the very back and just holding on comfortably, no panic yet.
We crest the baby gap and I look for that kind soul who gave me water in 2005 right around here and saved my life. The place is the turn off to Jerusalem incidentally. No such luck but a bunch of kids a bit further on look promising. As I come by they hold out a red can. I grab one, generic Diet coke…..I am disgusted and drop it, it pops and fizzes all over the road.
There could not be a more useless thing to give a parched rider than that, it does not even have any sugar in it…what are they thinking ! Oh well, serves you right for dropping your bottle.
The next 3 miles are fast down hill as we come off the baby gap and head into the App Gap west side proper. It is on us very suddenly and then I realize that the whole darn race is almost over and, I am here at the foot of the very worst part and still with the leaders, holy moley, who would have guessed it, I feel very pleased with myself.
Now the gaps start to open up in the field. John and cadre of hardcore anti-gravity agents simply start to float away up the climbs no matter how sharp they become. Me, I am struggling to turn my 39/25 and wished I had that 27 or 29 others had brought…no matter I will survive. I gulp down my very last Gel here.
I see riders ahead start to come back and suddenly I am passing the yellow Jersey. Suddenly I see Armstrong in that one year when he almost cracked on the Alp d’huez because he had miscalculated fluids. The Maillot Jeune is beside me and going backwards, racked (I would later learn as we lay side by side on the massage table) by muscle cramps and unable to make his legs work the way they should.
More riders come back but some of them have numbers that begin with ‘9’ and so must be from the citizen’s race that went out before us. The van pulls up and looks at me for a while as I groan and moan up the hills, I manage a smile and they move on revealing as they round the next corner a strange sight; it is me, two years ago, struggling up this same climb.
Well not really me but, a guy built like me then (a bit heavier) and riding a red bike and wearing a Colavita shirt with grey shorts, just what I used to wear. I am curious at this and surge up to this rider, he is in great pain and I simply smile at him as I pass. “great team” he gasps as he recognizes the like Jersey.
The last stretch of the App gap is like the Alp D’huez exactly. It is long, open, extremely steep (20%), you can see the top and there are people standing on the side cheering. There is also writing on the road and, on this occasion, a small child playing a bongo….not too sure why but he was.
I look back and see Kevin Haley. I had passed him earlier but he has staged a comeback and is slowly advancing on me. I am not in the least worried because Kevin does not know about my secret weapon, he has yet to see just how desperate I can be to get to the top of a hill and how hard I can make the legs work when I need them to…at least that's what I keep telling myself as I stare up the road and try to time the moment to spring.
The grinding is very slow now, I really do want to walk but it is just automatic. I hear the MC at the top announcing Joe Straub has taken second place..so they did not catch him, what a chancer he is.
Now it is time, there is 100M to go, I get up and, one more time, I command the legs to sprint, not this time they say, too much, it is not so much a sprint as it is a slow and steady surge that is draining away all my focus as I pick up a bit of extra speed and cruise, painfully over the finish line.
I have a most dreadful look on my face as reflected in the astonished expressions of the onlookers who do a double-take and move out of the way to get me off the road.
I look down and stop my watch. 3:08 it says, I cannot believe it, almost 30 minutes faster than I did it in 2005…Yoweeee…..that is something.
I congratulate Joe, David Friefelder, John Funk, hell I would congratulate anyone at all right now the relief I feel.
Off down for the 12:45 massage now.
The Appalachian Gap
65 miles, two massive climbs and KOM points.
60 starters
1: Claude Samson 2:59:51
2: Joe Straub +11
4: John Funk +2:37
6: Troy Kimbal +3:11
33: Michael Joseph +6:29
53: Lee Mestres (Mambo's) +20:55
54: Paul Carbonara +21:45
55: Tony Settel (Deno's) +21:45
57: John Tomlinson (Deno's) +25:08
59: David Hudson (Mambo's) 34:56
This is the major event of the weekend, it is the leg burner, the heart splitter, the ultimate race of truth, in short, it is the one day everyone dreads, climber, sprinter, old and young, this one is tears, agony and anguish for all, even the very best among us, and we have the very best among us, will be pushed to their limit and beyond.
The race starts with a long neutral downhill calculated to cool the warmed up legs right off before racing begins on route 100.
After that it is a fast and mostly flat road race with sprint points at 19 miles, then a while later into the Middlebury gap, a feed zone and then a series of ever higher climbs taking us over the ancient Appalachian mountain chain topped by KOM (King of the Mountain) points and rapidly down to start a long Northern run up it’s Western flank that ends only when we swing East again and climb first, the Baby gap, merely the foothills and then the mighty Appalachian gap with 5km of climbing, the last 3 being at about 12%, the very last one being the meanest with a final pitch to 20% right at the end to the top and the finish line. This is a race of attrition.
And so, after a reasonably successful day yesterday, I had again taken the rest of the day pretty lightly, the only entertainment being to stop in at the wonderful craft fair that had set up at Kenyon’s field and was closing down as I rolled up. I chatted for a while with an Irish/Jewish stone artist whose work was displayed around her stall on various forms of robust but clearly groaning easel. Her work was simple and involved etching rock with sand blasting and then polishing, too heavy to carry home though.
I retired after that to Jay’s restaurant in Waitsfield and demolished all sorts of fine things from the menu. This is one of those times when you can eat as much as you like at any time of day, it will all be burnt off anyway. Also good to note here, having had a massage, I was careful to spend as little time on my feet as possible so as to gie the legs the rest they need for tomorrow.
Up at 6;45, up to Mt Ellen ski resort and ready for the start. I look for Ciaran Mangen but cannot find him. We are off at 9:00 am and rolling for some 4 miles before we hit Route 100 south. Once we do things pick up nicely and there is no time for chat before the attacks come. Again, knowing who is doing the attacking can make all the difference.
Troy and Tony make a break again only to be caught within minutes. Then another three go up the road and this one looks real. There is a sprint point at 19 miles and this is obviously where they are headed. For a while we do little other than match their tempo and let them hang out there in the wind. Then we slow right down for no good reason though my guess is because Troy’s two team mates have gone to the front and are trying to hold us back.
The trio are now a quarter mile away and their lead is widening, they are not slowing down for anything. We are just rolling along at 15 mph when suddenly, with a flick of it’s helmeted mane, a cacophony of gear shifts and the rumble of suddenly engaged tires, the whole damn mess accelerates like a roller coaster and is instantly flying along at 35 mph in hot pursuit.
This comes just as we dive into the gorges and canyons on route 100, perhaps one of the nicest bits of road to ride down anywhere. This stretch has everyone in top gear and lying flat as can be while swooping through the curves at close to 50 mph.
For some reason fear has left me, now I am steadily passing others who are more cautious here and, sitting higher, have engaged air braking with their bodies. Not me, flat as I can be, elbows as close as I can get them, saddle in my stomach and chin on the stem I am passing them one by one. Before I realize it I am up with the three who escaped, they are now caught and another three come down with me.
I see now I have reached the maximum echelons of kinetic energy of this pack at this moment. Right here is here the action is as the six sprinters and I jockey for a good position at 45mph while the rest of the field hangs back. What the hell am I doing here? I wonder; the answer comes back sure and simple, having fun, what else.
We round the last bend of tree, all keenly looking for the sprint marker and suddenly there it is; a huge red banner on the right hand side of the road with a tripod and a camera. Their off, John leads out Tony, Troy jumps on his wheel and two others take a different line. I accelerate while keeping back so I don’t have to stand and I stay placed right behind them. Then they let it all go and the big men go flying off the lead outs, Tony, Troy, two more, it is mano e mano on wheels, each man working his legs, back neck and elbows, mouth in a rictus of power and anger bombing for the line. Troy takes it by a pencil width and it is over. Suddenly we are all friends again and rolling along chatting about what just happened like it was walking the dog.
Not withstanding this happy moment, two more guys leap off the front and we let them go. They are going for the KOM points up the Middlebury gap and no one seems to care.
We swing right into Middlebury and up past the feed zone. I have no food or water coming having packed two 16 oz bottles with Accelerade and a spare bottle of pure water in my jersey pocket. I have also packed a lot of Gel (4), two granola bars and about 4 inches of my secret fruit and nut biking loaf. I am sure this will be enough fuel and given the morning is cool I think I am in good shape for fluids though it will be close.
The real climbs of the Middlebury gap start right after the feed zone. Indeed no sooner have those last cheerful faces passed us by then the awful truth hits hard as riders leap to their feet to attack the surging hills now before us. Mid pack me; I start my inevitable drift backwards. I cannot help this and have to acknowledge that while my climbing is better than it has ever been, I am simply outclassed by these guys both in years of racing and their specialization.
For a while I am at the very back watching people slowly pull away from me but then a funny thing happens, and it always does. Those closest to me start coming back to me, a bit like a yo yo with one bounce. Now I am passing Lee, John T and others I have been riding with all week are next to me, head down, groaning and wheezing as they force the pedals around and I slowly pass them. A little up the road I see a guy in a Target training outfit, he is stopping to pee. I am impressed by his confidence that he can get back on after a stop like that.
I move on up the hills, I can still see the main group, they are strung out. John Funk is still with them so it is not too bad. A rider comes by me and I get on his wheel. He rides steadily and just at my limit so we ride up together wordlessly in the growing heat. I finally see the top, it is another 100M and so, as usual, I stand up and sprint to the top in an effort to make this part end sooner. As usual I surprise my self how much kick I can muster after 15 minutes of howling muscles but no matter, I am toasted at the top.
Two riders come by me then, they are the ones I just passed. We form a paceline and agree we have to haul ass now to get back on. We start 30 second pulls and we go like thunder down the other side of the gap into Ripton. Another rider joins us here, it is Mr target Training looking for a ride to the front. I get impatient. I can see riders ahead, we simply have to get to them, I fly past the current lead guy in the paceline and redline myself in an effort to close the gap. Sweat is pouring off me and spattering on my legs, the road is curvey and fast with a good surface.
Round the next corner we are into Ripton, there is traffic in the race here, the closest vehicle is the 40+ follow van and then some cars are between. Never mind that, I am completely fearless here again and simply race up to back of the van as it goes into a right hander. I hold off as I cannot see around the van and don’t want to take chance. Once the road opens up I take off and pass the van. Someone shouts at me, not sure what they say. I get down on the bars again and the road out of Ripton proves to be every bit as fast as I recall it to be.
Around the next corner I hit a bunch of bumps and I hear a crash behind me, damn, my spare water bottle has gone, bugger ! I keep going, the riders ahead are just within reach. A short uphill now and I pedal like a maniac and catch them and do. We slow up here for a few minutes before putting it back into gear again and pounding down the last stretch. All I can recall is my first ever GMSR and how, when I got dropped in Middlebury I could not get back on, that was not going to happen again.
Flat out gain through the bends with a tail of riders behind me we fly into the hard right hander that marks the end of the descent. Flags are being waved at us but I know this corner and I know I can take it fast.
We round the corner and there, lo and behold, Allah be praised, thanks be to god, there they are, and not just a small off-the-back group but the whole god damn pack!! It is a miracle. We all congratulate each other and join up with the rest of the field in time to eat and chat a bit before the pace picks up again, boy was that lucky.
The pace picks up as we head out towards Bristol, it comes and goes as various bodies try and break but nothing sticks. We round the bend up to the Bristol notch road, a short surly 20% climb, enough to wake everyone up here and then, onto the: Dirt Road…yes what a treat here in Vermont. 2 miles of hucks, yucks and shucks with pebbles, glass and washboard surfaces thrown in. What were they thinking of?
John Funk pounds through here at 26 mph and we all have to follow (he told me later) holding on for dear life as tires pop left and right, bottles fly out of cages and small bits of plastic whose purpose has never been ascertained fly off every bike that had one. All my bits thankfully stay attached, even my taped on Powertap and I stay attached to the bike though it is very hard at times. I will not need a massage tonight I inform the white-knuckled rider to my right.
This ends with a short sharp run up into Bristol and then on out route 125 towards the baby gap. This is uneventful and I feed on the fruit and nut roll with difficulty as it is very fast for no good reason I think until I see that two men are off and Kevin Haley, Joe Straub’s team mate is looking lonely. “Where’s Joe” I ask but I already know. Kevin nodded on down the road. Sure enough Joe has gone and gone hard, we are not even trying to catch him.
We reach the baby gap and begin to climb. This group is now down from 60 starters to about 45 and two are up the road. That means if I fall off here at the very back I will just make GC points, I need to do a bit better than that I realize. The baby gap starts out pretty soft, 4%, then 5%, then 6% then back to 5% and lots of meandering along the river, all well and good. The tempo is high though and, interestingly, we pick up speed as we go up the climbs and slow down on the flats. Riders start coming unglued; I see them drop back as I am again at the very back and just holding on comfortably, no panic yet.
We crest the baby gap and I look for that kind soul who gave me water in 2005 right around here and saved my life. The place is the turn off to Jerusalem incidentally. No such luck but a bunch of kids a bit further on look promising. As I come by they hold out a red can. I grab one, generic Diet coke…..I am disgusted and drop it, it pops and fizzes all over the road.
There could not be a more useless thing to give a parched rider than that, it does not even have any sugar in it…what are they thinking ! Oh well, serves you right for dropping your bottle.
The next 3 miles are fast down hill as we come off the baby gap and head into the App Gap west side proper. It is on us very suddenly and then I realize that the whole darn race is almost over and, I am here at the foot of the very worst part and still with the leaders, holy moley, who would have guessed it, I feel very pleased with myself.
Now the gaps start to open up in the field. John and cadre of hardcore anti-gravity agents simply start to float away up the climbs no matter how sharp they become. Me, I am struggling to turn my 39/25 and wished I had that 27 or 29 others had brought…no matter I will survive. I gulp down my very last Gel here.
I see riders ahead start to come back and suddenly I am passing the yellow Jersey. Suddenly I see Armstrong in that one year when he almost cracked on the Alp d’huez because he had miscalculated fluids. The Maillot Jeune is beside me and going backwards, racked (I would later learn as we lay side by side on the massage table) by muscle cramps and unable to make his legs work the way they should.
More riders come back but some of them have numbers that begin with ‘9’ and so must be from the citizen’s race that went out before us. The van pulls up and looks at me for a while as I groan and moan up the hills, I manage a smile and they move on revealing as they round the next corner a strange sight; it is me, two years ago, struggling up this same climb.
Well not really me but, a guy built like me then (a bit heavier) and riding a red bike and wearing a Colavita shirt with grey shorts, just what I used to wear. I am curious at this and surge up to this rider, he is in great pain and I simply smile at him as I pass. “great team” he gasps as he recognizes the like Jersey.
The last stretch of the App gap is like the Alp D’huez exactly. It is long, open, extremely steep (20%), you can see the top and there are people standing on the side cheering. There is also writing on the road and, on this occasion, a small child playing a bongo….not too sure why but he was.
I look back and see Kevin Haley. I had passed him earlier but he has staged a comeback and is slowly advancing on me. I am not in the least worried because Kevin does not know about my secret weapon, he has yet to see just how desperate I can be to get to the top of a hill and how hard I can make the legs work when I need them to…at least that's what I keep telling myself as I stare up the road and try to time the moment to spring.
The grinding is very slow now, I really do want to walk but it is just automatic. I hear the MC at the top announcing Joe Straub has taken second place..so they did not catch him, what a chancer he is.
Now it is time, there is 100M to go, I get up and, one more time, I command the legs to sprint, not this time they say, too much, it is not so much a sprint as it is a slow and steady surge that is draining away all my focus as I pick up a bit of extra speed and cruise, painfully over the finish line.
I have a most dreadful look on my face as reflected in the astonished expressions of the onlookers who do a double-take and move out of the way to get me off the road.
I look down and stop my watch. 3:08 it says, I cannot believe it, almost 30 minutes faster than I did it in 2005…Yoweeee…..that is something.
I congratulate Joe, David Friefelder, John Funk, hell I would congratulate anyone at all right now the relief I feel.
Off down for the 12:45 massage now.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
The Green Mountain Stage Race: Stage 2
GMSR Stage 2, Sept 1, 2007
The Moretown Circuit Race.
54 miles, 2.5 laps, a nice bit of climbing and some sprint points.
60 starters
1: SJ Spanbauer 2:10:34
4: Troy Kimbal +17
6: John Funk +17s
15: Paul Carbonara +17
17: Joe Straub +17
19: Michael Joseph +17
47: Tony Settel (Deno's) +17
49: John Tomlinson (Deno's) +17
52: Lee Mestres (Mambo's) +17
55: David Hudson (Mambo's) 11:28
After yesterday’s event I hoped this would be an easy flat race (relatively) with plenty of easy spinning and lots of recovery for tomorrow. Instead I worked almost as hard in this one as I had in yesterdays Prolog and came very close to being off at one point. The end turned out ok for me given how hard it was.
I took it really easy last night, ate a huge pizza with everything on it, got organized with food, drinks, numbers and clothing and was off to bed at 9:30 reading a little Bill Bryson (he is the funniest man I have ever read) before Morpheus came upon me at 10 pm. Up at 7 am and in for a nice breakfast cooked by the two doyennes of the Mad River Barn where I am staying, a combined age of 155 years between them.
Racing begins at 1pm today so I spend the morning at the Coffee store in town with the good WiFi coverage reading all sorts of fascinating things about Knowledge Management, the thing I do for a living.
11am I head over to the school in Duxbury for the sign in and start. I get there and park, sign in, head back to the van and, disaster strikes, while clipping on my Powertap the whole plastic mount cracks off and I have the PT in my hand. Damn….I can ride without it but boy will it be handy for later.
I get out and do about a 10 mile climbing warm up thinking I probably don’t even need to warm up for this one but just to be sure. Back at the lot I spy a roll of scotch tape on the official’s desk and jerry rig a taped up PT mount on my stem, looks ugly and amateurish, so what.
While in the lot I hear a powerful North Dublin accent yelling about something someone had done in some race somewhere. The voice is that of Ciaran Mangen warming up on his trainer. He is indeed an Irishman and is now racing for CCB and doing the 30+. We talk about the Sean Kelly Tour I did a few weeks back and promise to reconnect.
I find Lee Majestres of the Mambo’s and tell him that as today may well be his type of event, if he and Dave make any plans or need any help, I will be there for them as I am solo and happy to work with anyone. He seems completely uninterested; perhaps he knows something I don’t?
Line up and off, as Joe Straub later said to me: “neutral start? We left skid marks on the starting line” and indeed it was so. Someone went off alone the moment we crested the hill.
The course has one serious climb section, a set of four hills one after the other, all about 10% and about 150 vertical feet with no down until the fourth is conquered and then a rip roaring descent on great new road towards Interstate 89. We make a hard right before 89 and head East.
From here on it is just like a regular road race; crappy roads, bad tempered hillbillies in huge trucks armed with mirrors designed to take your head off and some very narrow bridges but, being Vermont, all this with astonishing views of the mountains and river valleys as we cross them.
We swing slowly South and then it hits us, that same damn wind we had yesterday. This time it comes at us from 2pm (if 12 is directly ahead) and we are all strung out across the road, each trying to get into the cover of the rider to his right. The first break for the sprint goes here.
First troy and then Tony take off, all for those 3 places on the line. We speed up but don’t honestly chase. Moments later the points were taken and now this group with a good lead were smart enough not to slow up. We give chase and the pace goes up to the point where I am seriously working.
I pop a Gel as we have been riding very fast for 30 minutes and now it is getting crazy hard. I look down the road and see Joe Straub up the front and working like maniac to bring them back, normally I am the sort of rider who, riding alone would go up there and help but not today.
I see John Funk up there also from my mid pack vantage point and I see another rider so huge that when he gets up on the pedals he towers over everyone at the front. For a moment I reminded of that image from the opening of the Lord of the Rings where we see Sauron in armor, a giant figure on the battlefield slaying men by the dozen.
Slayed we are being, my legs are starting to burn and I am just hanging on. We surge around a right hander and begin the climbing section again. Here John Funk lets it rip with a vengeance. Up in the lead and standing, he is floating up and down at 120 rpm in an astonishing flurry of pedal strokes aimed squarely at pulling back Troy and company who still have at least 300 yards on us.
This is where I almost lose it, I feel the burn at the front of my quads, I drop gears trying to keep spinning as much as I can but the hill mounts and I hurt. I am in first now and spinning wildly while slowly dropping back. I see Lee go backwards, then John T then I see Paul’s wheel just ahead and I instinctively latch on to it.
My HR is at 166 but this is a false HR. It is fatigued and depressed from yesterdays climb and I know from how I feel it would normally be showing 171-172, putting me right on the edge of failure. The slower heart means I have to breathe that much more heavily to compensate and the respiratory effort is enormous.
I know Paul will never let this bunch get away from him and so I his wheel. I am blind with sweat again, wheezing like a steam train and feel like something is about to pop. We are pulling 23 mph up this damned hill and I am dying. There is a short break at the top then the next one starts, it is a little easier and I stand up, desperate to stay on this wheel.
Finally I see the top and ease off, I know I can descend fast enough to close the gap here and I really hurt so badly. Just as I do, the whole field eases up and I see why, we have caught Troy et al and now we can all breathe easy, at least for now.
John in his rage has really hurt the field; we are at least 10 men down, just 50 left.
The run down the hill sees me pick up a lot of speed and wheedle my way back to the middle of the pack as we spend the next 4 miles averaging 35 mph with a fantastic view of the mountains ahead.
I have learned a few truths about this sport. One truth; it is a sport of economics.
The careful measuring and spending of finite resources such that they are best used in the allotted time to achieve maximum results.
For me, a racer usually way below par in these events, every calorie spent is a calorie I won’t have when I really need it, either to avoid being blown out the back in a particularly hard moment or, the calorie I will need to secure a reasonable place at the end. So I am not riding at the front, I am riding in the middle.
I am not contesting sprints, I am not attempting breakaways and I am keeping my head (literally) down as low as possible at all times to conserve effort and reduce wind. Additionally I now stop pedaling as much as I can because even though the spinning is good for keeping the legs clear, it costs.
Now with the first sprint points taken, the first break pulled back, we are back to the road race section and I see someone else has gone off, brave soul. The pace picks up again although this time there seems to be still a great weariness in the pack after that horrible charge up the hills.
We cross the bridge and again I see Tony take off with Troy on his wheel. We let them get 100 yards up the road before turning up the heat and they are brought back right after the sprint is done. I recall how when I need a mantra in a TT, it always comes back as “None Shall Pass”, so here I think “No One Here gets out Alive” and so it is. This pack will not let anyone escape.
It is always puzzling how the pace of a race gets set, we round the corner for the last run into the hills and this time the pace is easy, we crest the last hill at about 18 mph, at least 5 mph slower than the last time and then head down into that lovely long descent, yes, this is how I recall it felt when I enjoyed just cycling, this is like one of those lovely ambling MAFW rides through gorgeous Sussex county, good company, easy pace, the air was sweet with farm yard things and not curdled with the stink of aggression, ambition and treachery.
Just as we hit the bottom, six men break away again in an act of unprovoked aggression and we are in chase at full power. I can’t see who is in it but I can guess the usual suspects are at work. Sure enough, Joe’s black and white jersey is missing from this bunch so he must be up there; he is one hell of an aggressive rider and always in a break.
This final attack takes about 15 minutes to pull back and when we do it is on a small climb that tells of a finish line just a few miles up this long and fast stretch of highway. We ease up here and, just as the speed comes down, two guys make a launch for it and fly off up the road. I don’t know who it is but am more concerned that no one is reacting, amazing!
These two are going for the finish and we are doing nothing about it.
Another truth I have learned is that this sport is all about people. If you know the people, you may well be able to predict what will happen. The guys who went up the road are not GC contenders, Troy, Joe, John et al are all still in the pack so no chase.
We continue rolling at no more than 20 mph. The pack bunches up, it starts getting gnarly tight, a guy rides into my ass with his handlebar, no harm done.
Suddenly another guy goes, there is a moments surge then nothing, I start to work my way up the inside getting a good few spots forward before losing the way. Then John comes up on my right and I hop on his wheel knowing if I can keep it I have a chance of placing top 10.
One more thing I have learned is, I am very risk averse. My natural tendency when things get tight is to slide backwards instead of holding my ground. I think this is sound in terms of safety but not so in terms of placing. The bunch is very tight now and though I am well placed I have lost John’s wheel, it was getting too hard to hold.
We are down to the last mile, at some point ahead I know we are allowed use the whole road for the sprint but I don’t know when that will be and I only hope it is soon.
I watch the cagey body language up front, no one is willing to start the sprint, they are all looking at the other guy.
First, Second and Third place have all gone up the road and we are here playing cat and mouse. I am looking for an opening and about to jump when it happens for me, the whole front twenty suddenly drop the coy acting and charge for the line. At the same time a wave of riders now across the yellow center line come pounding down on the left, damn, that's where I should have been..
I pick my way through the sit-up guys and take one wheel after another forward in the mash of wheels and elbows, I pull myself up up up and then with 100 yards to go I jump off a CRCA wheel and sprint for the line.
I am startled by what happens next. The body; tortured for two plus hours, the legs burning and screaming for rest, suddenly find that last frantic kick and I take off like a rocket leaving most of the field behind. Of course so do the sprinters around me and when they go, they really go. It really is incredible how you can just switch that frenzy on and jam out 1200 watts for a few moments, even after all that pain.
I hold my own here and come in 19th overall, an astonishingly mediocre result but then, I am a mediocre racer overall so this is just fine, I am consistent.
I ride home with Joe, arriving exactly in time for my massage and then, eat, rest, read and bed, ready to dream about tomorrow.
We rode 53 miles at about 24.5 mph, last year I did this same race 10 minutes slower, it sure felt harder than that but the field was almost twice as big providing lots of cover.
The Moretown Circuit Race.
54 miles, 2.5 laps, a nice bit of climbing and some sprint points.
60 starters
1: SJ Spanbauer 2:10:34
4: Troy Kimbal +17
6: John Funk +17s
15: Paul Carbonara +17
17: Joe Straub +17
19: Michael Joseph +17
47: Tony Settel (Deno's) +17
49: John Tomlinson (Deno's) +17
52: Lee Mestres (Mambo's) +17
55: David Hudson (Mambo's) 11:28
After yesterday’s event I hoped this would be an easy flat race (relatively) with plenty of easy spinning and lots of recovery for tomorrow. Instead I worked almost as hard in this one as I had in yesterdays Prolog and came very close to being off at one point. The end turned out ok for me given how hard it was.
I took it really easy last night, ate a huge pizza with everything on it, got organized with food, drinks, numbers and clothing and was off to bed at 9:30 reading a little Bill Bryson (he is the funniest man I have ever read) before Morpheus came upon me at 10 pm. Up at 7 am and in for a nice breakfast cooked by the two doyennes of the Mad River Barn where I am staying, a combined age of 155 years between them.
Racing begins at 1pm today so I spend the morning at the Coffee store in town with the good WiFi coverage reading all sorts of fascinating things about Knowledge Management, the thing I do for a living.
11am I head over to the school in Duxbury for the sign in and start. I get there and park, sign in, head back to the van and, disaster strikes, while clipping on my Powertap the whole plastic mount cracks off and I have the PT in my hand. Damn….I can ride without it but boy will it be handy for later.
I get out and do about a 10 mile climbing warm up thinking I probably don’t even need to warm up for this one but just to be sure. Back at the lot I spy a roll of scotch tape on the official’s desk and jerry rig a taped up PT mount on my stem, looks ugly and amateurish, so what.
While in the lot I hear a powerful North Dublin accent yelling about something someone had done in some race somewhere. The voice is that of Ciaran Mangen warming up on his trainer. He is indeed an Irishman and is now racing for CCB and doing the 30+. We talk about the Sean Kelly Tour I did a few weeks back and promise to reconnect.
I find Lee Majestres of the Mambo’s and tell him that as today may well be his type of event, if he and Dave make any plans or need any help, I will be there for them as I am solo and happy to work with anyone. He seems completely uninterested; perhaps he knows something I don’t?
Line up and off, as Joe Straub later said to me: “neutral start? We left skid marks on the starting line” and indeed it was so. Someone went off alone the moment we crested the hill.
The course has one serious climb section, a set of four hills one after the other, all about 10% and about 150 vertical feet with no down until the fourth is conquered and then a rip roaring descent on great new road towards Interstate 89. We make a hard right before 89 and head East.
From here on it is just like a regular road race; crappy roads, bad tempered hillbillies in huge trucks armed with mirrors designed to take your head off and some very narrow bridges but, being Vermont, all this with astonishing views of the mountains and river valleys as we cross them.
We swing slowly South and then it hits us, that same damn wind we had yesterday. This time it comes at us from 2pm (if 12 is directly ahead) and we are all strung out across the road, each trying to get into the cover of the rider to his right. The first break for the sprint goes here.
First troy and then Tony take off, all for those 3 places on the line. We speed up but don’t honestly chase. Moments later the points were taken and now this group with a good lead were smart enough not to slow up. We give chase and the pace goes up to the point where I am seriously working.
I pop a Gel as we have been riding very fast for 30 minutes and now it is getting crazy hard. I look down the road and see Joe Straub up the front and working like maniac to bring them back, normally I am the sort of rider who, riding alone would go up there and help but not today.
I see John Funk up there also from my mid pack vantage point and I see another rider so huge that when he gets up on the pedals he towers over everyone at the front. For a moment I reminded of that image from the opening of the Lord of the Rings where we see Sauron in armor, a giant figure on the battlefield slaying men by the dozen.
Slayed we are being, my legs are starting to burn and I am just hanging on. We surge around a right hander and begin the climbing section again. Here John Funk lets it rip with a vengeance. Up in the lead and standing, he is floating up and down at 120 rpm in an astonishing flurry of pedal strokes aimed squarely at pulling back Troy and company who still have at least 300 yards on us.
This is where I almost lose it, I feel the burn at the front of my quads, I drop gears trying to keep spinning as much as I can but the hill mounts and I hurt. I am in first now and spinning wildly while slowly dropping back. I see Lee go backwards, then John T then I see Paul’s wheel just ahead and I instinctively latch on to it.
My HR is at 166 but this is a false HR. It is fatigued and depressed from yesterdays climb and I know from how I feel it would normally be showing 171-172, putting me right on the edge of failure. The slower heart means I have to breathe that much more heavily to compensate and the respiratory effort is enormous.
I know Paul will never let this bunch get away from him and so I his wheel. I am blind with sweat again, wheezing like a steam train and feel like something is about to pop. We are pulling 23 mph up this damned hill and I am dying. There is a short break at the top then the next one starts, it is a little easier and I stand up, desperate to stay on this wheel.
Finally I see the top and ease off, I know I can descend fast enough to close the gap here and I really hurt so badly. Just as I do, the whole field eases up and I see why, we have caught Troy et al and now we can all breathe easy, at least for now.
John in his rage has really hurt the field; we are at least 10 men down, just 50 left.
The run down the hill sees me pick up a lot of speed and wheedle my way back to the middle of the pack as we spend the next 4 miles averaging 35 mph with a fantastic view of the mountains ahead.
I have learned a few truths about this sport. One truth; it is a sport of economics.
The careful measuring and spending of finite resources such that they are best used in the allotted time to achieve maximum results.
For me, a racer usually way below par in these events, every calorie spent is a calorie I won’t have when I really need it, either to avoid being blown out the back in a particularly hard moment or, the calorie I will need to secure a reasonable place at the end. So I am not riding at the front, I am riding in the middle.
I am not contesting sprints, I am not attempting breakaways and I am keeping my head (literally) down as low as possible at all times to conserve effort and reduce wind. Additionally I now stop pedaling as much as I can because even though the spinning is good for keeping the legs clear, it costs.
Now with the first sprint points taken, the first break pulled back, we are back to the road race section and I see someone else has gone off, brave soul. The pace picks up again although this time there seems to be still a great weariness in the pack after that horrible charge up the hills.
We cross the bridge and again I see Tony take off with Troy on his wheel. We let them get 100 yards up the road before turning up the heat and they are brought back right after the sprint is done. I recall how when I need a mantra in a TT, it always comes back as “None Shall Pass”, so here I think “No One Here gets out Alive” and so it is. This pack will not let anyone escape.
It is always puzzling how the pace of a race gets set, we round the corner for the last run into the hills and this time the pace is easy, we crest the last hill at about 18 mph, at least 5 mph slower than the last time and then head down into that lovely long descent, yes, this is how I recall it felt when I enjoyed just cycling, this is like one of those lovely ambling MAFW rides through gorgeous Sussex county, good company, easy pace, the air was sweet with farm yard things and not curdled with the stink of aggression, ambition and treachery.
Just as we hit the bottom, six men break away again in an act of unprovoked aggression and we are in chase at full power. I can’t see who is in it but I can guess the usual suspects are at work. Sure enough, Joe’s black and white jersey is missing from this bunch so he must be up there; he is one hell of an aggressive rider and always in a break.
This final attack takes about 15 minutes to pull back and when we do it is on a small climb that tells of a finish line just a few miles up this long and fast stretch of highway. We ease up here and, just as the speed comes down, two guys make a launch for it and fly off up the road. I don’t know who it is but am more concerned that no one is reacting, amazing!
These two are going for the finish and we are doing nothing about it.
Another truth I have learned is that this sport is all about people. If you know the people, you may well be able to predict what will happen. The guys who went up the road are not GC contenders, Troy, Joe, John et al are all still in the pack so no chase.
We continue rolling at no more than 20 mph. The pack bunches up, it starts getting gnarly tight, a guy rides into my ass with his handlebar, no harm done.
Suddenly another guy goes, there is a moments surge then nothing, I start to work my way up the inside getting a good few spots forward before losing the way. Then John comes up on my right and I hop on his wheel knowing if I can keep it I have a chance of placing top 10.
One more thing I have learned is, I am very risk averse. My natural tendency when things get tight is to slide backwards instead of holding my ground. I think this is sound in terms of safety but not so in terms of placing. The bunch is very tight now and though I am well placed I have lost John’s wheel, it was getting too hard to hold.
We are down to the last mile, at some point ahead I know we are allowed use the whole road for the sprint but I don’t know when that will be and I only hope it is soon.
I watch the cagey body language up front, no one is willing to start the sprint, they are all looking at the other guy.
First, Second and Third place have all gone up the road and we are here playing cat and mouse. I am looking for an opening and about to jump when it happens for me, the whole front twenty suddenly drop the coy acting and charge for the line. At the same time a wave of riders now across the yellow center line come pounding down on the left, damn, that's where I should have been..
I pick my way through the sit-up guys and take one wheel after another forward in the mash of wheels and elbows, I pull myself up up up and then with 100 yards to go I jump off a CRCA wheel and sprint for the line.
I am startled by what happens next. The body; tortured for two plus hours, the legs burning and screaming for rest, suddenly find that last frantic kick and I take off like a rocket leaving most of the field behind. Of course so do the sprinters around me and when they go, they really go. It really is incredible how you can just switch that frenzy on and jam out 1200 watts for a few moments, even after all that pain.
I hold my own here and come in 19th overall, an astonishingly mediocre result but then, I am a mediocre racer overall so this is just fine, I am consistent.
I ride home with Joe, arriving exactly in time for my massage and then, eat, rest, read and bed, ready to dream about tomorrow.
We rode 53 miles at about 24.5 mph, last year I did this same race 10 minutes slower, it sure felt harder than that but the field was almost twice as big providing lots of cover.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
The Green Mountain Stage Race, Stage 1: (too stupid to know better)
GMSR Prolog, August 31, 2007.
40+ field.
1: Claude Samson (Ste-Foy (Que Metro) Inc.) 32:42
2: John Funk (FIORDIFRUTTA) 32:50
6: Troy Kimbal (Westwood Velo) 33:06
9: Joe Straub (CRCA - DKNY/Signature Cycle)33:15
42: Paul Carbonara (Century Road Club /Axis) 35:48
47: Michael Joseph (Colavita) 36:29
49: Tony Settel (Deno's) 36:38
50: John Tomlinson (Deno's) 36:43
55: Lee Mestres (Mambo's) 37:44
60: David Hudson (Mambo's) 42:10
In summary: a headwind, spasmodic legs, terrible thirst, blinding sweat, low blood sugar and a HR stuck at 171 most of the way excepting the top where in the last 80M I sprinted to catch the man ahead and shot over the line only to have as close a call with exercise-induced vomiting as I ever want to have.
In perfect weather and with another year of training in my legs for my 3rd GMSR, I rode up the App gap (East side) for the prolog in 36:29, a whole 29 seconds slower than last year and placed in the exact same 47th as last year making off with just 4 of the available 50 GC points.
This despite having my best legs yet for climbing, being 10 lbs lighter and having many thousands more miles on the clock.
One change to note, this year I rode in the 40+ group, a field that usually gets up the mountain a minute or more ahead of the Cat 4-B group of my past years. Additionally, and I see this born out across all the fields, all winner times by field were as much as 2 minutes slower than last year, an oddity that could be attributed to the high price of gasoline, global warming or possibly just the headwind. A whistler more and more noticeable as you climbed and at some points contrary enough to almost stop the few solo riders who had gone off the front early.
In Kenyon's field in Waitsfield where cars, trucks and vans from all over the country parked and riders began their various routines and ablutions I had been calm and methodical. I had registered early and then noting my tires were shot, rolled over to the Mavic support vehicle and asked for a new pair. Hey presta valve, I was presented with the very best Michelin racing tires as a gift...yes siree, just what this lad needs.
I got back to the van and noticed the woman to my right was working a hand pump on her wheels and rather painfully at that and so I offered her the use of my handy dandy Costco compressor which she accepted. Her name was Rose Lee and she was from Vermont. She would do the W 3/4 that went off before my field.
I warmed up differently this year also. Last year I warmed up by riding the mountain a few hours beforehand but doing it slowly and easily, this year I simply did some solid trainer runs to get the HR up and no more. I now think the climbing warm-up for a climbing event is your only man, certainly for me.
I also decided not to carry any fluids at all to save weight as I figured I could hydrate adequately beforehand and then holdout for the 36 minutes to the top without fluids. Sadly I also forgot to carry any Gel. This was a mistake as I really needed it after the first 15 minutes of climbing.
I rode out at the front (I had promised myself I would stay at the front this year as it is so hard to get there on the small roads) with Tony Settel of Deno's and we chatted nervously about the climb ahead and our shared experiences at Prospect park. He told me he was not a climber at all and more of a TT specialist. We had a 3 mile neutral start and when we crossed the bridge that marked the race proper, Tony took off and was promptly followed by two more eager beavers. I let them go and kept a good tempo at the front for a while.
Soon the skinniest guy I have ever seen came by me and got in front. I stayed right behind him looking at the big "Tonka" printed on his Jersey, wondering when toy companies had become race sponsors. A moment later a CRCA / AXIS rider came by and cut across me rather hard pushing me off that wheel. Then he took off and left us. Tonka rode a good hill, he kept it moving briskly and with a certain rhythm in his legs that looked unlikely to fail any time soon.
After a few minutes those early jumpers were in sight again and as soon as they were, a few more went. I stayed put, my HR was already at 162 and the headwind was making even this flatter section of the course a tough haul.
We caught Tony and two others and passed them and then a Black and White DKNY rider came past and sat ahead of me. I recognized this to be Joe Straub by his slightly rocking gait and knew he was going to be a man to beat on this climb. Next to me two riders locked bars and barged into the guardrail at 15 mph, no harm done.
The grinding and gnashing had started in earnest now and riders were steadily coming past me as I tried not to over do it knowing my muscles would fail if I pushed too hard too early. A rider ahead dropped his chain, I skirted around him and kept it going. The crowd in front began to pull away, and now at 171 bpm I knew I was at max and there was very little more to give this early. Soon the thirst started, the mouth began to glue up with the massive amounts of air being gulped and the sweat was pouring off the peak of my cap and dripping onto the front wheel.
The road turned and twisted and, as it does here and grew steeper with every turn. I made it to the wide clearing and right hand sweeper that marks the last mile to go. Then I heard my name being called out in encouragement and saw Rose standing nearby and waving at me, she seemed far away and in a slight haze but I looked over and grinned imagining I was off the front in the Alps with 5 minutes on the field.
The next twist saw the road pitch to an awful 16% or so. I heard riders behind me and in a valiant effort I stood up, popped it down to 3rd and began to swing. My speed picked up substantially on this steep road, so alas did my HR.
Stuck at 171 for most of the way up with 180 my max, it now surged to 175 and suddenly the legs came apart and I had to sit down. I looked back and the following riders had dropped over 200 feet back but the price had been high and now my HR would not come down. I had to slow up and get some recovery. The final stretch came into sight. I was really crawling now, ashamedly slow, like ready to get off the bike and walk crawling.
I passed one of those unbelievably toned biker women standing on the side of the road and she looked at me steadily and said, "just make it to the tower and you are done" and indeed, there it was, the radio tower at the top of the gap now in view....gasp, I was almost there, just this stretch and then the last climb.
I knew exactly what I would do now. A rider passed me just as I needed him to, he pulled slowly away, I righted myself, eased the breathing, took control back, cleared the face, the nose (excuse me) and then picked up some speed and held him in view, 100 feet ahead.
As the last climb to the tower came into view I stood up and sprinted, and by god was I amazed at what came out of the legs, I positively flew up this last stretch flat out, possibly pulling 20mph and rapidly hauled in the other rider. Faces along the side looked confused, "what is he doing" they seemed to say, "he can't go up here like that, he will pop!"
But no, I pushed as hard as I could and caught Mr James Nash of CCB Volkswagen NH right on the line.
...YEEEESSSSSSSssssss........ then I really did Pop.
Holding back on the urge to vomit, I scrambled to find somewhere to stop such that I could keep breathing, not have to stand up (couldn't), drink, and eat all at once. I was spinning in a haze of sugar failure, muscle spasms, howling heart rate and terrible thirst all with breathing like a volcano....but it was over, over, over!
I noted later that while I had been slower this year, so had everyone else. In fact on average the field was two whole minutes slower than last year while I was only 30 sec slower. I also noted that if I had ridden the same group (cat 4-B) as last year, my time would have put me into the top 20, A good improvement over last years 47th.
Then I noted something else, the 30+ field had a leader who finished a whole minute slower than the 40+. Given this, my time in the 30+ would have put me in the top 20….yow.
Down for my massage, a good meal and early to bed, more to come on the morrow.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have inserted a number of the times and places at the top of this post choosing racers I know and have raced with for many years. Joe is a master climber and placed first at Highpoint this year. The Deno's and Mambo's riders are usually very strong contenders in regular circuit events (Deno's dominate in Prospect park, the Mambo's in NJ) but you can really see how Dave Hudson the mambo's star sprinter (he took the NJ Crit championship 35+ in August) suffered on this one.
John Funk is a regular at prospect as is Paul C, they are always the ones to watch on those early Saturday mornings. Paul came second at Bear Mountain earlier this year, another brutal race.
Race results are here: http://www.velocityresults.net/results/113/gmsr-stage-1-waitsfield-vt
40+ field.
1: Claude Samson (Ste-Foy (Que Metro) Inc.) 32:42
2: John Funk (FIORDIFRUTTA) 32:50
6: Troy Kimbal (Westwood Velo) 33:06
9: Joe Straub (CRCA - DKNY/Signature Cycle)33:15
42: Paul Carbonara (Century Road Club /Axis) 35:48
47: Michael Joseph (Colavita) 36:29
49: Tony Settel (Deno's) 36:38
50: John Tomlinson (Deno's) 36:43
55: Lee Mestres (Mambo's) 37:44
60: David Hudson (Mambo's) 42:10
In summary: a headwind, spasmodic legs, terrible thirst, blinding sweat, low blood sugar and a HR stuck at 171 most of the way excepting the top where in the last 80M I sprinted to catch the man ahead and shot over the line only to have as close a call with exercise-induced vomiting as I ever want to have.
In perfect weather and with another year of training in my legs for my 3rd GMSR, I rode up the App gap (East side) for the prolog in 36:29, a whole 29 seconds slower than last year and placed in the exact same 47th as last year making off with just 4 of the available 50 GC points.
This despite having my best legs yet for climbing, being 10 lbs lighter and having many thousands more miles on the clock.
One change to note, this year I rode in the 40+ group, a field that usually gets up the mountain a minute or more ahead of the Cat 4-B group of my past years. Additionally, and I see this born out across all the fields, all winner times by field were as much as 2 minutes slower than last year, an oddity that could be attributed to the high price of gasoline, global warming or possibly just the headwind. A whistler more and more noticeable as you climbed and at some points contrary enough to almost stop the few solo riders who had gone off the front early.
In Kenyon's field in Waitsfield where cars, trucks and vans from all over the country parked and riders began their various routines and ablutions I had been calm and methodical. I had registered early and then noting my tires were shot, rolled over to the Mavic support vehicle and asked for a new pair. Hey presta valve, I was presented with the very best Michelin racing tires as a gift...yes siree, just what this lad needs.
I got back to the van and noticed the woman to my right was working a hand pump on her wheels and rather painfully at that and so I offered her the use of my handy dandy Costco compressor which she accepted. Her name was Rose Lee and she was from Vermont. She would do the W 3/4 that went off before my field.
I warmed up differently this year also. Last year I warmed up by riding the mountain a few hours beforehand but doing it slowly and easily, this year I simply did some solid trainer runs to get the HR up and no more. I now think the climbing warm-up for a climbing event is your only man, certainly for me.
I also decided not to carry any fluids at all to save weight as I figured I could hydrate adequately beforehand and then holdout for the 36 minutes to the top without fluids. Sadly I also forgot to carry any Gel. This was a mistake as I really needed it after the first 15 minutes of climbing.
I rode out at the front (I had promised myself I would stay at the front this year as it is so hard to get there on the small roads) with Tony Settel of Deno's and we chatted nervously about the climb ahead and our shared experiences at Prospect park. He told me he was not a climber at all and more of a TT specialist. We had a 3 mile neutral start and when we crossed the bridge that marked the race proper, Tony took off and was promptly followed by two more eager beavers. I let them go and kept a good tempo at the front for a while.
Soon the skinniest guy I have ever seen came by me and got in front. I stayed right behind him looking at the big "Tonka" printed on his Jersey, wondering when toy companies had become race sponsors. A moment later a CRCA / AXIS rider came by and cut across me rather hard pushing me off that wheel. Then he took off and left us. Tonka rode a good hill, he kept it moving briskly and with a certain rhythm in his legs that looked unlikely to fail any time soon.
After a few minutes those early jumpers were in sight again and as soon as they were, a few more went. I stayed put, my HR was already at 162 and the headwind was making even this flatter section of the course a tough haul.
We caught Tony and two others and passed them and then a Black and White DKNY rider came past and sat ahead of me. I recognized this to be Joe Straub by his slightly rocking gait and knew he was going to be a man to beat on this climb. Next to me two riders locked bars and barged into the guardrail at 15 mph, no harm done.
The grinding and gnashing had started in earnest now and riders were steadily coming past me as I tried not to over do it knowing my muscles would fail if I pushed too hard too early. A rider ahead dropped his chain, I skirted around him and kept it going. The crowd in front began to pull away, and now at 171 bpm I knew I was at max and there was very little more to give this early. Soon the thirst started, the mouth began to glue up with the massive amounts of air being gulped and the sweat was pouring off the peak of my cap and dripping onto the front wheel.
The road turned and twisted and, as it does here and grew steeper with every turn. I made it to the wide clearing and right hand sweeper that marks the last mile to go. Then I heard my name being called out in encouragement and saw Rose standing nearby and waving at me, she seemed far away and in a slight haze but I looked over and grinned imagining I was off the front in the Alps with 5 minutes on the field.
The next twist saw the road pitch to an awful 16% or so. I heard riders behind me and in a valiant effort I stood up, popped it down to 3rd and began to swing. My speed picked up substantially on this steep road, so alas did my HR.
Stuck at 171 for most of the way up with 180 my max, it now surged to 175 and suddenly the legs came apart and I had to sit down. I looked back and the following riders had dropped over 200 feet back but the price had been high and now my HR would not come down. I had to slow up and get some recovery. The final stretch came into sight. I was really crawling now, ashamedly slow, like ready to get off the bike and walk crawling.
I passed one of those unbelievably toned biker women standing on the side of the road and she looked at me steadily and said, "just make it to the tower and you are done" and indeed, there it was, the radio tower at the top of the gap now in view....gasp, I was almost there, just this stretch and then the last climb.
I knew exactly what I would do now. A rider passed me just as I needed him to, he pulled slowly away, I righted myself, eased the breathing, took control back, cleared the face, the nose (excuse me) and then picked up some speed and held him in view, 100 feet ahead.
As the last climb to the tower came into view I stood up and sprinted, and by god was I amazed at what came out of the legs, I positively flew up this last stretch flat out, possibly pulling 20mph and rapidly hauled in the other rider. Faces along the side looked confused, "what is he doing" they seemed to say, "he can't go up here like that, he will pop!"
But no, I pushed as hard as I could and caught Mr James Nash of CCB Volkswagen NH right on the line.
...YEEEESSSSSSSssssss........ then I really did Pop.
Holding back on the urge to vomit, I scrambled to find somewhere to stop such that I could keep breathing, not have to stand up (couldn't), drink, and eat all at once. I was spinning in a haze of sugar failure, muscle spasms, howling heart rate and terrible thirst all with breathing like a volcano....but it was over, over, over!
I noted later that while I had been slower this year, so had everyone else. In fact on average the field was two whole minutes slower than last year while I was only 30 sec slower. I also noted that if I had ridden the same group (cat 4-B) as last year, my time would have put me into the top 20, A good improvement over last years 47th.
Then I noted something else, the 30+ field had a leader who finished a whole minute slower than the 40+. Given this, my time in the 30+ would have put me in the top 20….yow.
Down for my massage, a good meal and early to bed, more to come on the morrow.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have inserted a number of the times and places at the top of this post choosing racers I know and have raced with for many years. Joe is a master climber and placed first at Highpoint this year. The Deno's and Mambo's riders are usually very strong contenders in regular circuit events (Deno's dominate in Prospect park, the Mambo's in NJ) but you can really see how Dave Hudson the mambo's star sprinter (he took the NJ Crit championship 35+ in August) suffered on this one.
John Funk is a regular at prospect as is Paul C, they are always the ones to watch on those early Saturday mornings. Paul came second at Bear Mountain earlier this year, another brutal race.
Race results are here: http://www.velocityresults.net/results/113/gmsr-stage-1-waitsfield-vt
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
