We lodged at Zehnder's Splash Village which is a newer hotel just outside of town. They have built a hotel around an indoor water park that is actually pretty cool. After getting settled into our room I got to work on figuring out b'fast and caffeination. Sadly, all I could find for breakfast at the hour we would need it was the 7-11 in town. I need to caffeinate and hydrate early so as to offload excess well in advance of my race time, if you know what I mean. My race was scheduled to start at 0730 so I need to have all that excess dealt with by 0715 at the latest. It's rough getting old.
After I got back to the room, I noticed we were short one pillow. "No problem", I said. "I'll just call down to the front desk and we will have a pillow in a few minutes." Apparently, no one answers the phone at Zehnder's Splash Village after 1030 pm. I slept on a folded up towel. Bottom line for me...sleep was almost non-existent.
James and I stumbled out of bed at 0530 and tried, (at least I tried), to not wake the entire family. We didn't really succeed at all. We left the bikes to pick up later and went out to the 7-11. We did have some cliff bars and bananas in the car which made James pretty happy. There really wasn't anything for us there except for the coffee.
Back to the hotel to wake the family up again and retrieve the bikes.
We rode the short distance to the start line which was right in front of Zehnders and Bavarian Village. What a great place for a start. Whatever you think of this little town you have to admit it is very quaint. Tourist trap?? Maybe but definitely quaint. We warmed up riding around the parking lot. Our 1-2 team was thee all decked out with radios. How cool is that. Wouldn't have done us much good because of the size of our field. I think it was in the 12-15 range. Because of that the purse was reduced from $500 to $250.
Our team consisted of Rune "Ruin" Duke, Joey Schaard and myself. We would be the largest team in the field with the strongest rider in Joey. I don't think there was any question that this was the case. Joey is a legitimate cat 1-2 racer and we are blessed to have him with us. I am sure we are down to our last couple of races together so I wanted to savor every minute of it. When you have someone this strong on your team it really presents problems for others. Everyone was going to try and chase Joey down. He was a marked man but that gave us other options. The race was scheduled for 4 lap/62 miles. I liked that distance. I knew it favored us given the kind of hours Rune and I have put in this season.
The fun got under way a little late as we had to wait for our motorcycle escort to get on scene. I'm so thankful that he volunteered to serve us in this way but this guy needed a little more briefing to be an effective escort.
We rode out of town, made the first right hand-er came to a stop sign and we went straight behind our escort. The problem was, we were supposed to turn right!! Great. We are less then a mile into the race and the group is split in two as half made the correct turn and the rest of us didn't. I made a hard right, rode down a little grassy hill and back up the other side to re-join the group. We were slightly rattled but no harm done.
I don't think we got very far into that first lap before the rains started. Once it did, it never stopped. It was just a matter of how hard it was coming down.
As we moved towards the last third of the first lap, we were overtaken by a small group of riders with the same 100 series bibs as ours and printed in the same color! I honestly thought they were from our field. Some later told me it was some masters on a break. They came flying up behind us dropping F-bombs shouting people off their wheels. The whole thing was confusing to me. I started to elevate the pace to reel these guys back in but I couldn't get any help. Our escort was confused to and he left us to support them. (Note to self: Drop a line to the race organizers suggesting distinct bib numbers and colors for each field. )
From here the race settled down some. I took it upon myself to lift the pace every chance I could. I wanted this field to feel this race at the 50 mile point. We got some help from a TCC rider and a
n Spout rider. If we Joey, Rune, myself or these other guys weren't driving the pace we just slowed right down. I'm sure they are looking at Joey and thinking if they were going to have any chance they needed to save their legs for the last lap. I can't really blame them, I guess. So we continued in this rhythm. Through the first lap.The second lap saw some minor skirmishes but nothing stuck. The Spout rider commented that we weren't going to get anything off the front that included the three of us SLC riders. Of course, he was right but I think it was more a matter of folks going wherever Joey went. I tried to block for Rune and Joey on a few occasions and the field just panicked and rode around me. A nice little gap had opened but they were determined to close it.
There is so much to tell and I can't keep going, I'll be up all night. Let me condense.
The rains fell and we were all begininning to suffer from the cold. At times the rain was at least moderate and maybe even heavy for a moment or two. By the last lap, I think, this field was ripe for the picking. I managed to get away with Rune and Chris Brinkman but it was unintentional on my part. It's funny. All those times I jump and try to get away and it doesn't succeed. Here I was just doin' my thing driving up the pace and I see Rune ride by and jump in front of me. "Way cool" I think to myself. Rune is going to take another turn. Then there's Chris Brinkman who had been pretty quiet up until now. When I was on the back I looked back and we had a decent gap. Not huge, but a gap nonetheless. So, I moved back to the front with a little something extra...something akin to TT pace. Rune and Chris did the same. The gap started to really open up.
Here's what I think happened. The field was just freezing cold, tired and ready to be done. Joey wasn't in the break. In that split second you have to decide if you should chase or not, they chose to "not". This is why a rider like Joey makes everyone around him a more dangerous racer. Joey saw us away and blocked very effectively. (This according to a Priority rider I talked to afterwards). He refused to do any work in that group. Maybe they figured we would tire and the field would get a chase going. But no one was willing to offer chase. The Spout rider who was working so well with us earlier, crashed on the previous lap riding into town. I was told he got back up and rejoined the group but he couldn't have been 100%. I saw the crash and went down pretty heavily. The TCC rider was the only rider left who might have gotten it going but no one else wanted to work.
Our lead just kept growing and growing. I kept encouraging Rune and Chris to just keep it smooth and to not blow themselves up. We were riding in awful conditions at this point. The rain was coming down and the winds had kicked up. We were riding echelons to maximize our speed. With every turn we had to change our formation. The break must have been out for 10 miles or so. These were glorious painful miles. I could see we had a great chance to stay away. Eventually, we couldn't even see the field.
Thoughts started creeping into my mind..."What should we do about Brinkman?" Hindsight is 20/20. If I knew then what I know now, we would have tried to get rid of him a few miles from the finish but I just didn't know if Rune and I would stay away by oursleves. What if the our efforts to shake off Chris did nothing but allow he group to catch us? There were other moments when I felt as if I might be able to ride off the front. I thought Chris might be close to his limit after his pulls. With Runes help, maybe I could just put my head down and step up the pace a little more and break him. You just get those thoughts sometimes...a hunch really. I was cold but feeling pretty good. I knew I had more speed if I needed it. My pulls seemed a little longer than the others also. Maybe Chris was working me over, I dunno. One has to be careful when one is 44 and he is racing a 16 or 17 year old kid. Whatever I had left he probably had more. The more I mulled the finish over in my mind the more I became convinced that I should set up Rune for the sprint. I would step up the tempo just as high as I could and turn him loose. I figured my strength was this endurance stuff but Rune has an incredible jump and if we could tame Chris with a super hi tempo, perhaps Rune could get off first.
We rode up the last hill into town with Rune in the lead. When we got to the top I ordered Rune onto my wheel. I started spooling up the pace before the last turn into town. Had to be careful on those wet cobbles in the turn. Out of the turn and I dialed it up has high as I could. it wasn't good enought to stop Chris from jumping. I shouted for Rune to go and he jumped but it was over. Ch
ris had enough left to open up a decent gap to take the win. Rune got a much deserved second and I a third.This was easily the most exhilarating race I have every taken part in. Riding away in that break was just awesome. I know it will probably never happen that way again but I'll take it this time!
I rode over to Jean, the kids and our smallish SLC fan club. That's when the shaking kicked in. Rune rode up to me and complained of numbness. We were there talking for some time before the rest of the field came in. In the last ten miles we had opened up a 3-5 minute lead in horrible, Belgian-like conditions. Man, this is what bike racing is all about.
Back to the shaking. This is a similar deal to what I had last year at BTR when it took me an hour to stop shaking. Jean noticed a priority rider shaking outside Zehnder's. Jean offered to gaurd his bike so he could go inside to warm up. He took her up on it. He was from our field and brought me up to speed on what happened when we left.
After a lot of hot coffee and a warm shower, I was back to normal. Man did that warm shower feel good.
Well a good day of racing should be followed by 4 hours at a waterpark climbing stairs and screaming down waterslides right? Well that's what we did! My kids combined with the V-kids, (Alexey, Rem and Moss), and I rocked that house! It was only later that I recalled that after an effort like that race you are immuno-suppressed for six hours! And here I was swimming in warm water with maybe 400 small childeren. Uh-oh!
2 comments:
Wow!, Thats sounded like a fun race. Congrats on the 3rd place. I wanted to do that race soo bad, but i had my graduation open house. Well it sounded interesting.
It was cool.
P.s. Bananas give me stomach cramps
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