The time trial on Sunday was fun, but I didn't seem to exactly break the sound barrier. 17km on a very nice course though, mostly flat on a nice twisty highway by the river.
Not much to say about a TT except that I pushed really hard on the pedals for a while, and hoped for the best. The whole experiment of racing a TT bike for the first time went fairly well too, I didn't pull anything or get blown into the ditch, all was good.
Stopped the clock at 25:18, for a whopping 62nd place.
The next and last stage was a good one, major climbs, but only 100km in length. Format was predictable, the Louis Garneau team who had ~5 guys in the top 6 on GC would patrol the front of the peloton and bring any break aways back by the base of the final climb.
An 8 man move got away on the 20km downhill that started a few km after the start, and we picked some of them up who got dropped on the first KOM of the day. I got up to the front at the base of this climb because it was a hard turn onto some 12% roads for the first little while, but nothing major went down at the front, just everyone mashing a steady pace.
Before the 3km dirt section not long after the KOM I moved right up again hoping to bring Andrew, our highest placed rider at 16th, up and out of trouble should this road be crappy, and it ended up being the nicest dirt road I've ever seen. It was smooth with hardly any loose gravel.
Over the top of the long climb on this road the pace went way up and things got a bit strung out, but other than that the race was fairly controlled until the bottom of the final climb. The pace all stage just seemed too high to see many attacks go.
Then on the final climb I rode like a bag of bricks. I let the front group just ride away because I was feeling the onset of the dreaded redline and I knew this climb was long enough, 3km at 9%, that you don't want to go too deep to early.
I spent the rest of my way up riding through the string of other dropped riders, gradually upping my pace and rolled across the line solo for 57th place. Not the worst, but I really expected a better climb from myself than that. I felt fine all day and wasn't bonking or even feeling the efforts from the previous days, it was just like my top end that day was Micky-Mouse go-cart speed.
Even afterwards, was feeling fine after no time, but was ready to hurl a lung on the climb itself. Will be looking into this for sure.
So the final GC position is not really worth a mention, but it was 58th. I think I will submit '58 out of 120' as a new definition for 'completely meh' to Webster.
But all in all the weekend and the race were both awesome. Go ride in Vermont, you will love it. And if you want to go get tuned in a P/1/2 road race, they have those too.
'completely meh'... haha :)
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