Today I was suffering on the old highway near Kamela. This suffering was from stinging hail chunks as Rad Doc and I got caught in a wicked hailstorm. Exactly one week ago I was suffering in the heat of the first stage of the Elkhorn Classic. I talked about Stage 4 a few days ago. Here is my recap of the other stages:
Stage 3: Gold Rush Criterium
Meaningless merry-go-round racing.
Stage Kiddie
Here I got the first taste of being a competitive parent. I can’t wait to start berating little league umpires and yelling at basketball coaches to give my kid more playing time.
Training . . .
. . .tasting bronze.
Stage 2: Pleasant Valley Time Trial
I had a good warm-up and felt good during the time trial, but didn’t set a time that was much better than a year ago. We had a strong headwind going out, so I think that made all the times a bit slower this year. In any case, I haven’t put in any brilliant time trials this year, including in training. I may mess around with my bike and set-up in the off-season. I definitely don’t like this Pleasant Valley time trial course, whereas I loved the previous course on Pocahontas. It gave the “non-climbers” a much better equalizer and it was a faster course with better pavement.
Stage 1: Richland Road Race
This was the first, and hottest day of the whole race. The new course had us plunging down toward Hell, where it was even hotter. Fortunately, we turned around before reaching Hell—or more specifically, Halfway to Hell. A couple year’s ago, the race organization gave us a notepad in our packet that read, “To Hell You Ride.” I’m pretty sure these were printed for the annual motorcycle rally, but they would have been fitting to give out at this year’s race.
I don’t really like out and back racing, especially on a road with angry ranchers who are pissing mad that they were delayed one minute on their trip to the city. Even more disturbing is passing another field of bike riders in the opposite direction. We passed the Pro-1-2 field in the feedzone, going full-speed downhill. The Pros coming uphill in the opposite direction were all over the road and loose bottles where rolling into our path. Nearly brushing shoulders with a bike racer going in the opposite direction isn’t fun.
The wind was all over the dial during the race. On the downhill headwind plunge to Richland, we saw quite a few attacks but the group wasn’t allowing anyone to go. Then we turned around and the wind blew us back up the canyon. Other than some relatively fast short climbs, everything was docile until we emerged into the open plains into some crazy cross winds. The only real incident was a big rock that caused a disturbance in the back of the field that sent Fred Meyer headfirst into the ditch. I’m glad he was okay, because I was taking advantage of Fred’s wheel during the entire criterium. This event was very similar to last year when a turtle suddenly appeared on the road near the back of the Cat 3 peleton. Only this time, there was much less carnage. I originally thought the turtle story was a tall-tale since I’ve ridden lots of miles on these roads and never seen a turtle. Rad Doc has a confirmed turtle sighting so maybe there was a turtle. I still hear people talking “The Turtle” at other races.
When we arrived at the final climb, I’m not sure if I was feeling good or the group was just climbing slower than usual. I was doing some cyclocross riding on the shoulder gravel, but I liked my position and tempo so much that I kept crossing it. Eventually I moved up to about 5th position and felt like I was starting to blow up, so I eased over to the left side to shelter from the wind and dropped back some places. Just then, Sunny (an acquaintance from Boise racing) put in a fearless attack that took him and another guy to the 1-2 finish. In the meantime, I managed to tack onto the chasing group that caught up with them right as they crossed the line. The pace must have been pretty fast up the climb, because the rest of the field was strung out behind us. I was happy to have a same-time finish and feeling surprisingly fresh after a hot day of racing.
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