Tour of the Catskills

Last night my mom and I we were up all night driving home from Tour of the Catskills after the really hard final stage. The race started out with a short uphill prologue. I did it on my road bike with an aero helmet and tri-spoke front wheel. We got there really early when there was nothing set up yet and parked two miles away in a grocery store parking lot. My time was at 12:05:30 and the technical guide said you had to be at the start 15 minutes before, so I had to get off the trainer 25 minutes before, because I had to have 5 minutes to get my final things ready and 5 minutes to ride there. But by the time I started I was completely cold and it felt like I hadn't warmed up at all. I went really hard but it was such a short effort that my legs didn't really open up until the last minute. My time was 8:58 up the 2.2 mile climb for 9th place. David's time was about 25 seconds faster and Justin got second place with 7:48.

I was excited for Saturday's big road race and I hadn't gotten to see any of the course but Justin and David told me all about it. The promoter decided to start the Juniors race with the Masters 50+, which at first I was frustrated with but learned to ignore it. The race started pretty fast up a long gradual climb on this highway and there were a lot of attacks. I was bridging across to one when I hit a huge hole and one of my bottles flew out only about five miles into the race. That was the beginning of a somewhat disastrous race for me. We descended from that climb and turned left into the woods where two riders went off the front. Then several masters riders attacked and one of the juniors riders followed them, now about 15 miles into the 52 mile race. Then Justin bridged across to them and then I attacked and bridged across to the break. For some reason I thought I was in a crit or something, so as soon as I made it across I attacked the break and tried to bridge across to the leading two riders. In about two minutes the break caught me at the base of a steep roller. I sat on the back of the break but got slightly gapped off over the top of a roller a few minutes later. I chased from a few seconds behind for a couple miles with some OLD FART on my wheel who wouldn't help me. It was hard though because we were going over these endless rollers and the break kept slaying it up the hills and then they would slay it down the hill too. I saw Justin just sitting on the back of the break, which was smart, I don't know why I attacked and got myself dropped. After wasting energy chasing for a couple miles with the gap to the break increasing, I looked behind to see if there was anyone else coming across. I didn't see anyone but the break was leaving me in their dust and I was just wasting a ton of energy at this point so I decided to go back to the pack and eat some GELS. Instead I got caught by a small chase group with the Juniors yellow jersey who probably attacked because Justin was second on GC. A few seconds behind us I saw David on the front of the pack bringing it back together. Then there were some counter attacks up the next steep hill and I was pretty tired I thought that I might go straight out the back of the now much smaller pack but I suffered a ton through this section because there were no chances for recovery because we would go uphill for 30-60 seconds and then go downhill for like 5 seconds. After like 30 minutes of barely making it over the top of each roller we finally got to a bigger descent and I took a drink and ate something. Unfortunately I realized that I hadn't been eating or drinking this whole time and I remembered that I only had one bottle which was now about empty. I had no idea where on the course we were or where the big climb was then we turned left and rode like a mile and got to this super steep hill and at first I was freaking out and really nervous and everyone was passing me but about halfway up the climb I found my confidence and went really hard over the top. I realized that this was the big climb of the day because David said that it starts out really steep and then rolls along for the rest of the three miles. Then there was a false flat for a while and the pack was breaking up a lot. I began to feel really bad and about halfway up the climb I blew up probably because I wasn't eating and drinking. Then I just rode really hard and went really slow for a while until two other juniors caught me. Somewhere on the climb I thought I needed to spit but instead a big mouthful of barf came flying out of my mouth. Then we descended and went up some hills and went down some hills and then we came to this big descent. My rear race wheel has this problem with the hub that is supposed to be a common problem with old Ksyriums. Whenever I was going really fast downhill during the race it would start squealing and pushing the chain around and off the derailleur and stuff. Nathan said that it is because the freewheel is sticking so it pushes the chain around but doesn't have enough force to push your legs around like a fixed gear. So this started happening on this descent and by now it was starting to really annoy me and then I hit a hole and the chain got all bent up and twisted. I stopped for ten or fifteen minutes getting my hands all greasy trying to untangle it but I couldn't. Even when I took it to the Sram mechanic after the race, he had no idea how to fix it and we had to put a new chain on. Since the chain was all knotted up you couldn't ride it at all and I was now ten miles away from the finish. I waved at one of the Sram cars when they went by but they didn't stop for me. So there was no way I could have finished the race so I got a ride back to the start. I was so mad because I was just wondering what is wrong with my luck especially because last time I came to New York to race my chain broke too. If my chain hadn't broken I think I would have been about 8th place. David got third place and moved into third GC, and Justin ended up in 6th place after blowing up on the climb after he was in the break about 4 minutes ahead of the field for most of the race.

Nathan told me to protest with the officials and see if they would let me start the next stage if they just put me last in gc by a large margin. The next morning we talked to them and they decided to let me race. That was great because the final stage was really hard and I really wanted to race. We went up the devil's kitchen climb which is this stupid road that goes for like 2.5 miles at about 400%. Nathan said it was the hardest climb that he had ever seen. The race started with a 3 miles KOM climb that we went pretty fast up. I was actually hurting on this climb because I really needed to pee. Fortunately I just peed in my pants on the descent. Justin attacked over the top of the climb to take the maximum KOM points since he was leading the KOM competition. There were some attacks and other stuff (including my epic bike handlez to ride under someone's arm who was giving someone a bottle during the feed zone) for a while but after wasting so much energy yesterday I had promised myself that I wouldn't attack at all until the climb, since that climb was more than enough to decided the race. We hit the climb and the pack was only about 20 people left by then (starting with 45 masters and 13 juniors). I was feeling good and had been eating and drinking really well throughout the race. Fortunately I had put on a 27 tooth for the climb but I still had to mash up it. For a while I was about fifth place on the road (juniors) up the climb but halfway up it I was caught and passed by two others. I couldn't keep up with them and they dropped me a few hundred meters (several minutes) later. The climb was that steep. Everyone was riding on their own and you could hear everyone breathing really hard. I had to go as hard as I could just to make it over the climb. A lot of people walked some sections. Some parts I thought I was gonna fall over, which I guess was a return to my roots of going ridiculously slow uphill. I had driven the climb but I had no idea at any point how far up the climb I was and when I saw the KOM banner I was shocked. I thought I would be going up that climb for a few more days at least.

After the climb I took a look down the road. There was no one in sight. I looked behind me and there was no one there either. It was a lonely final ten miles back into town because no one was near me. I hoped that I could catch some sort of a group in front of me and sprint for top five on the stage but I never saw anyone. So I just rode my brains out, or whatever was left of them after that climb, until the finish. I think I finished 7th place, a few minutes behind Justin who said he blew up on the climb and finished 6th. David finished fourth to keep his third place on GC. I was so happy to finish an epic road race like this having given it my all and not had any mechanicals and to just have that feeling of satisfaction. It was a great day for me.