Niagara Classic: Pass and Fail.

The Niagara Classic - a race to love and hate. Pretty simple rectangular course with a fairly short but steeeep climb up Effingham hill each of the 10 laps around. Nice course to race, but the hill kills. Really not that hard to get up and over, but its usually a sprint up there each time which can take its toll very quickly. 

Going into this one after Catskills I wasn't too worried about the course, even though I'd never ridden this race in S1/2 or done the hill 10 times. I did want to make something of this last O-Cup this year, so early break was the name of the game. Just a question how...

Went in early with Rach and got to watch her race of 9 riders and the winner come in solo by many minutes, pretty crazy. Small races like that are never easy. She did pretty well especially considering her feelings towards climbs. Way to go Rach, job well done. 

Our race had about 35 riders, offering the potential of more breakaway combination/attempts. I started making my early moves at the top of the first time up the climb. Tried to get away with Anton as per the plan, but too many people tried to come with and we got chased down instantly. Heard that on this blog before? So original. 

I try again over the top of the hill next time, still no luck. By the time we got the hill the first time, a Darkhorse and H&R Block rider had snuck off the front, so their teams were keeping a bit of a leash on things. 

On the flats we then set up a move that included another Darkhorse rider, and we started to get away since we didn't have their team chasing, but we STILL got chased down, although it took some more time. 

Then right after that a counter attack went from Max C from SRS, which nobody went with. It seemed like a good moment to go after all the action so I jump up to him, and still nobody behind is reacting yet. We start pushing on and getting away, perfect. 

Before long we can see the two leaders, but Max is hurting and was having trouble pulling through. We turn onto the false flat, and he's had enough and pulls the chute. By the top of the climb I had burning acid fire in my legs but had finally caught the two leaders. For the next lap we get a good rotation going and are definitely going to stay away a while. 

Then starting the false flat up the climb later that lap, a group of about 10 riders catch up to us out of nowhere! There was so many of us I thought it was the peloton at first. Chaos ensued for a moment as everyone looked around to figure this one out, and a shuffling occurred where a new 6-man group formed off the front of this jumbled mess. I made into this group, including team mate Brandon, and again, started pulling away.

This group was a bit different, and we were probably rolling 5km/hr faster than the former lead group. We were cooking along the course and with all the teams represented except Darkhorse, I knew this move would stay away. The only problem (which happened to be a huge one!) was that as the pace spiked over the hill each lap I was hurting and sliding, 10 feet, catching back on, 20 feet, catching back on, and then infinite feet, of the back of the group. The final time I chased with everything I had but was just not shutting down the gap on lap 6, when Steve in the commissar car drives past and points to the chase group about 1min behind that I didn't even know about. Salvation? hmm. 

I savour the chance to rest and regain clear vision as the chase group comes up to me, and its more of the strongmen in the race, Schiller, Ivey, the provincial champ and another HR block guy. Hanging onto this group would be no easier, but I latch on, and pull through until the false flat. And sure enough on the hill I slowly slide of the back. For Pete's sake... dropped twice.

- Note to self, I should lose some weight, get a lighter bike, and pack legs with more lightning. 

Now I'm no man's land. Up sh*t creek without a paddle. All my matches are burned, and I'm pretty sure I'll get swallowed up by the pack before getting shot out the back and finish last, if at all. Yahoo!

Well its lap 7, and I'm reminded of Catskills and think, if I can solo those courses and survive, I can probably do this. I have no idea how far back the pack is, only that I can't see them, so I plow on, into the remaining 35km and three accents up the climb. The cheers of the crowd on the hill were encouraging, thanks to them for that. I'm sure it wasn't the pinnacle of pedalling fluidity and grace when I was coming through. 

For a very painful ~60 minutes it was TT mode with all that I had left and somehow... somehow, hold off the pack. The somehow was that in the lead group, we pulled out major time. They had 11 minutes when they finished, and of that I only lost 7, enough to stay away. So after this sufferfest I rolled in alone, muscles twitching, 9th place. 

Apparently Anton finally was allowed to fly the coup and solo'd the last lap ahead of what remained of the peloton (about 15 DNFs), and came within sight of me one the final climb. 'You were that guy weaving up the climb at the finish?' yeah....  

Tour of Catskills

Last weekend was definitely the most strenuous two days of my life. Either of the two days would probably have qualified on their own for the hardest day. Wasn't exactly supposed to be that way, even though the course would have its challenges for everyone!

The first of three stages was a time trial. 20km, easy enough. Andrew M. was generous enough to actually lend me his ridiculously fast Cervelo TT bike, disc wheel, the works. I was ready to suck it up on my road bike but he ran into me just before my start and we decided to rig it up right there, change of pedals, raised the seatpost, and off to the race!

I had a descent run, certainly helped by the bike and funny helmet also lent from Rach.. (gotta get a TT setup of my own some day... but so expensive!), but racing in the pro/1/2 field often humbles your best efforts, and I ended up roughly mid pack on the first day. I'll take that, had some slowdowns with cars on the course and getting used to the new bike.. not to bad a start.

Stage 2, totally different story.
- 150km, 4 KOMs, one of which was the famous Devil's Kitchen which is 2.6km over 12%, and let me tell you, that sucks. Its hard to visualize this thing without staring at the wall-like ramps that make up this climb. For the locals reading this, its like 4xRattlesnake all at once, but steeper. Yes steeper. You make words up when its that steep.

The pace of the stage started off pretty hot, team mate Derrek was planning to light things up early and shake up the teams trying to control the overall situation. He's good at that and there were many short lived breakaways, including a huge 15 man group that had to many hangers-on to stay away, but if they worked that would have been the move of the day for sure.

Anyway, when we were back together 20km into the stage, on a descent I felt the oh so dreaded drag-wobble of a rear flat come on. Great. 60->0km/hr with one brake while avoiding riders flying past me, I finally pull over to the guard rail and hopefully look back for the wheel van to get a quick wheel change. Instead I see not a soul in sight, and suddenly I'm on my own in the middle of nowhere on some mountain. wtf.

Keep on truckin, right? 130km by foot can't take that long...
So as I'm walking down the road, coming up with some hitchiking plan, the wheel van shows up! The driver apologizes and says that after helping some others, and trying to catch the race again, he got wrong directions and got lost! So I get a wheel but its been 3-4 minutes and there is no way in hell I'm chasing back on alone. Regardless, I chase for the next 20km to see what happens, just in case there's a big lull, with no sight at all of the race. Its over.

I sit up and realize what awesome views there were all through this race, jaw dropping nice. Clouds covering tree covered mountain tops, dipping down to wide gorges below... I could look at that all day.

Eventually a group of other mechanical unfortunates make it up to me, and together we proceed to finish the last 100km of the 'race'. By the time we hit Devil's Kitchen at the end, we were all fried and just did what we could. A follow car from another category somehow found us and followed us as the last riders to finish, lights blinking, 7km/hr up this stupid hill. They also gave me a 25 tooth gear to replace my 28 I had on the original wheel. That made it all the more brutal at 10rpm up this thing. We were so wasted just trying to survive this day, oh yeah, it had started raining and getting cold, that we were like the dehydrated animal in the desert being followed by vultures (the wheel van) waiting for us to just kick the bucket and pack into the broom wagon.

Well.. I crossed the line with an H&R block guy, well outside the time cut, but given the fiasco that started the whole thing, they allowed us to start the next day.... as long as I would wake up at all from that night's sleep. If we just had to finish the stage, it wouldn't have been that hard. But driving a small group trying to make the time cut made it like our own race - a lot of effort for just making it through in the end!

Stage 3: 
Amazingly I can walk the next day and don't feel like a giant piece of beef jerky, so I decide to start. Game plan? Sit in the first 40km (1hr) and see if I'm alive, then just go from there.

I actually feel fine for the start, see a break get away including team mates and Anton, sweet for them, then we hit the first KOM. Today's profile would be almost as hard as the day before, even without Devil's Kitchen. The chase begins in earnest up the first, LONG, KOM, and I slide out the back as the group starts to shred near the top. On the way down the KOM leader (??) comes by with a train of other riders and we start to chase back on. On the way, half the riders with us just pull off and turn towards their hotels, chute pulled! Oh man, down to two of us.

We make contact with the peloton again, and the initial break had been caught as a result of the high pace. We hit the feed zone, and gear up for the same KOM again... oh god. Pretty early on the pace goes through the roof on the climb, and the pack is shredding to bits again, its all over the place. I ride over the top with another rider as we see the remnants of the peloton get further and further away down the decent. Only 80km in at this point, another long day still ahead.

We pick up riders, drop some, grind up the KOM's on this route, and after what felt like a straight week of riding, make it to the finish in a delirious haze.

It was hours before I was feeling normal again. Couldn't eat, couldn't think straight. Happy it was finished. And how did I finish? You guesssed it, DFL. Never thought I'd be reporting that! The DNF list sheds some light on how tough the whole race was, only ~54 finished of 94 starters. Although last place counts for absolutely nothing, there's a small amount of solace in at least finishing after all that happened.

At this point I can feel the end of the season coming up, just one more local race next weekend, the Niagara Classic, then maybe off to the Green Mountain stage race in Vermont in early Sept.

The end is near!