Onion River Racing

Photos from the Burlington Crit

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admin Race Results 2009, gmsr, Racing, vermont

Andrew passed this along to me- republishing because, well,  damn!

Green Mountain Stage Race 2009 Category 4 Race Report

I started racing this summer with the intention of focusing on the GMSR as the culmination of my season’s endeavors.  Although my first season became far more active than I expected, I went into this years stage race never having lost sight of what I wanted to do from the beginning.  The Cat4 stage race opened with a bang on Friday.  Having intentionally avoided training on the ITT course, I was ready to go out from the start and hammer every inch of the course.  Attacking the first portion of the climb, I came around the first bend and had a good view of the two riders who started before me spread out along the road ahead.  With them as targets, I spun up the hill and had caught both by the first false flat.  A third rider farther ahead on the last portion of the climb immediately became a third focal point that pulled me to the top.  As I crested the hill the headwind briefly slowed my progression and I found myself after about 800m having eased just a little to much.  At that point one of the riders who I had passed on the climb pulled alongside me, and we helped push each other all the way through to the final climb.  I over-geared the last portion of the hill, and came across the finish line worried that I had not pushed the final stretch fast enough.  I was very pleased though when I got back to the start to find I had posted the fastest time in my category by 1 second, completing the course in 16:01.

I was very fun to be able to start the Moretown circuit race on Saturday in yellow, and gave me an added boost of confidence.  Going into the stage the top ten riders were all very close, easily within reach of the yellow with the 15 second time bonus offered at the finish sprint.  Although I was worried about the possibility of losing the jersey, I remained focused on just staying relaxed as possible; this was a task that I quickly found to be difficult.  Whenever an attack went off, I found that I would ultimately spend more time pulling in attempt to bridge the gap since other riders believed I had something to lose. The only scary part of the race was on the final climb up Duxbury when a crash occurred about half way up the hill right in front of me. Looking up the road as I attempted to jump back on my bike, I saw a group of about 15 riders about 200 meters up the road and accelerating for the KOM.  Knowing that they had the potential to stay away I didn’t want them to crest the hill with that large of a gap and I attacked the remainder of the hill and just caught the very tail end of the group by the KOM.  The remainder of the race was fast but uneventful.  I led the final 3k out in an attempt to break the final sprint up a bit and rolled through the finish in the top twenty.  Unfortunately, the rider who had placed second the day before in the ITT pulled through in the top 5 and gained a five second time bonus, enough to give him yellow.

Even though I went into Sunday’s road race in second overall, I knew I had the opportunity to make up more than enough time to secure the lead if I rode Ap Gap well.  With that in mind, I rode very conservatively the entire race.  A break of 9 riders formed in the first 15 miles, and by Brandon Gap had secured between 3-5 minutes ahead of the pack.  It was a close call, but the right one to stay in the back and let others pull as we just caught the remaining two riders of the break at the base of Ap Gap.  Three riders immediately accelerated up the first stretch of the climb, pulling through the first switchbacks very quickly.  I carefully sat in third waiting for the long 8% stretch after the false flat to make an attack.  When we were about half way up that four of us accelerated and quickly put a gap between the rest of the field behind us.  As we came around onto the final false flat before the giant wall leading up to the finish line we were all neck in neck.  Two riders were able to accelerated just enough to have about 10 meters on me going into the final climb.  Yellow was right in front of me.  About halfway up the climb the rider in yellow did a single switch back and lost his momentum, and I accelerated past him in one last try to catch 1st and 2nd only 2 second ahead.  I wasn’t able to close the gap within a few second of the lead, but crossed the line in 3rd and successfully put 2-3 seconds into yellow jersey.

Only a couple of seconds back going into the crit, anything was possible.  Third place was within grasp of my position and I was within grasp of first.  I knew I had to attack every time bonus sprint in an attempt to gain the lead, but was also focused on defending my position from the 3rd place contender.  It was pretty amazing to consider the fact that any mechanical issue could easily take me from the podium.  The race pace was fast from the start.  Without anyone to defend, I found that any attack that I made was easily bridged by the other four riders fighting for top five.  Things quickly became frustrating as the man in yellow had nothing else to do but stay on my wheel.  Although I grabbed some time bonuses, so did the leader.  I was able to get enough bonuses after 15 laps to go to give myself 2nd in the G.C.  At that point I found myself literally crossing my fingers and hoping that I wouldn’t have a flat or crash in the final 8 laps.  The road conditions were not good and I found it extremely difficult to find a clean line coming into the home stretch, and I always seemed to lose about 5 meters going into the sprints.  I came across the finish though in 6th and successfully held onto second place in the general classification.  I am very pleased with the outcome, and looking back over the weekend have no regrets for how I performed and am glad that I avoided any mechanical problems and crashes that could have easily taken me out of the running.  All in all a perfect weekend.  I look forward to getting my upgrade to Cat3 this week and the opportunity to continuously improve.

admin Race Results 2009, gmsr, onion river racing, race