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Milk Ras Stage 3
5/22/01
At 115 miles, today’s race was the longest I have
ever done, and while
the
results might not show it, it was also one of my best
personal
performances.
The first category 2 climb came only 5 miles into the
race and was
approximately 3 miles long. I was climbing great, but
let’s not forget
this
is a Euro field we are dealing with and despite my best
efforts, I
finally
popped off the pace less then 500 meters from the top.
Unfortunately,
once
again, the pack was absolutely flying and they were
gone by the time I
reached the top. For the next 20 kilometers, our 10
man group gave an
all
out downhill chase and amazingly, we finally caught
the pack.
Unfortunately,
only a few minutes later, the 170 rider pack strung
out single file
with the
pace reaching 35 miles per hour even on the rises. It
was excruciating
and
after about 20 minutes of this inhuman pace, I finaly
lost the wheel
and
dropped out of the pack.
By the way, letting a gap open at those kinds of speeds
in a single
file
pace line does not make you a very popular guy in the
European Peleton.
A few moments later, a group of 5 caught up to me and
we worked
together to
pick up a few more riders. For the next 60 miles or
so we had a fairly
tight pace line going with me and another rider doing
most of the
work.
Making it more difficult was the fact that there were
many sections of
pave,
which were much worse than anything you would ride on
in America.
However,
despite the fact that I have only done one 115 mile
ride this whole
year, I
felt myself getting stronger and stronger as the day
went on. At about
50k
to go, we were caught by a group of about 20 which included
one of my
teammates. At this point, I probably could have sat
up and let some of
the
others do the work, but I was feeling so good that I
continued to work,
mainly with about four others while the other 25 would
only
occasionally
take a pull at the front. My reasoning for doing that
was A) my
teammate
was suffering in the group and I thought that by taking
extra pulls he
would
be relieved of his responsibility to come to the front,
and B) I was
wearing
a jersey with the stars and stripes on it. Enough said.
With about 25 kilometers to go, we caught another group
of 15 which
contained another one of my teammates (Joe). Knowing
that he was a
sprint
specialist, I continued to take my pulls at the front
hoping to be in
good
position to set him up for the sprint. I knew we were
almost 100 riders
back
but it was a big enough group that you could tell there
was going to be
a
sprint. Rounding the last kilometer, Joe was in second
position and I
was
in third. At that point, we had entered the finishing
town which had a
few
sharp gravely turns as well as a lot of traffic and
road hazards. This
turned out to be to our advantage since the Europeans
aren’t nearly as
brave
as us Criterium racing Americans when it comes to going
around these
kinds
of obstacles. In fact, despite popular belief these
guys are terrible
at
corners and not very good at descents either. At 300
meters, Joe came
around the other rider and won the sprint with me right
behind him in
second. Of course we still finished around 80th and
the day didn’t do
much
to make up for my bad luck from yesterday but overall
it was a very
good day
for me. We averaged about 23 miles per hour for 115
miles over 3
categorized climbs and unlike the first stage where
I finished with the
pack
but didn’t do any of the work, today I know that
I was a major factor
in
getting some very tired racers to the finish line well
under the time
cut.
One thing I forgot to mention is that because of the
hoof and mouth
disease
there are not static feeds (they don’t want people
standing around in
the
grass on the side of the road) so all feeding has to
be done from
support
cars. Logistically this makes it very difficult because
if you are in
the
field and you drop back, you may not be able to make
it back to the
pack
again. If you get dropped, and the cavalcade passes
you, you have to
quickly get whatever you might need from the team car
as it goes by.
Otherwise, you just have to hope that a car comes by
with some water so
they
can fill up your bottles.
One other thing. I packed just about every piece of
cold weather /rain
gear
I have in my arsenal for this trip and despite what
every single person
has
told me, I’ve ridden in shorts and a short sleeve
jersey every day.
The
weather has been absolutely great so far and I’m
keeping my fingers
crossed
that it stays that way, even though the odds are that
we are going to
get
rained on at least a few times before the end of the
week.
Well tomorrow is only 75 miles but supposedly contains
the hardest
climb of
the race, switch backs and all. So far, none of the
climbs have
compared to
Gila or even the Santa Monica mountains but tomorrow
is definitely
going to
be a challenge.
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