Race of the Future

A couple TdFs back, I remember hearing the Versus commercials with the sound bite, "This isn't a bike race, it's a death march." That was running inside my head for Blue Mound, candidate for the 2016 Olympic road course. Welcome to the Queen's stage of the Tour of America's Dairyland.

I've had some horrible experiences on a bike over the years:
-stomping both feet ankle deep in icewater before riding through 20 degree temps, having to cut my icy shoelaces to get out of my shoes
-riding 130 hilly miles on a touring leg alone on a loaded bike, with a jar of nutella and no money
-riding to work with a windchill of -30, truly scared my extremities wouldn't make it without damage
-doing a 200km brevet on a fixed gear, 20mm tires, a carbon saddle, and zero training miles

Simply put, Blue Mound put them all to shame.

Lap one, cat 4/5, 50 starters. We take it easy, unsure of what lies ahead. Bomb through the downhills at 45+. At the first climb, the field shatters wide open.

Mike's in the lead group of 8 and they get a gap. I have no long road sessions and zero hill miles in my legs (I don't think Snake Alley really counts), so I'm lagging. With a lot of room to aggressively corner on the descents, I recover a few spots to find myself time trialing in 12th or so. My group of four is cooked. I either have to pull at 21mph or sit in at 19. I can't bring myself to sit in. We have yet to hit the real hill.

We hit the hill and hell begins in earnest. I can't tell you what really happened for a number of miles. My computer had inexplicably rebooted so I had no idea what mile we were on, and I'm not sure I wanted to know. We don't so much climb as scrape our souls up the pavement.

Match the riders ahead of you and you risk bonking with miles to go. Space out too much and find yourself alone. Nothing to do but just focus on the front wheel and my HR...161...175...somewhere in between... Looking ahead is a mistake, nothing but climb. Is that the last turn before the topout? Even the cheering fans on the hills are solemn. Cat 3s and women litter the course, some are retiring already. We are less than halfway into this race.

Rollers, we recover. We pick up Adam. He's been somewhere in the top ten, but now faded back to us. He hasn't trained much this spring, and hasn't raced at all. He rode a thousand miles around Lake Michigan in under two weeks, took a single rest day and suited up for this race. He's in the pack with us.

Again I pull too much, but I try to ease up a little more this time. We come together, maybe 10th-18th, we've picked up a few from behind us. No one's pushing it. I put in a few weak digs to thin the pack, but it doesn't thin as much as I'd hoped. We enjoy 50 mph on eight miles of downhills, but the hills come too soon. A couple go off the front, a couple off the back, none to be seen again. I'm in with three others, and we approach the mid-lap climb. One ditches us.

And on. We pick up Mike. This is not a good sign. He's a climber, suited for endurance races. This should be his day. He's been dropped by the lead group. Turns out his biggest cog is only a 23, and his legs are failing. He asks if I have a 25, and I consider giving him my wheel, but the fact is, it's been misbehaving, the chain twinkling on the spokes while torquing in my climbing gear...which is most of this race. I'm afraid stopping to swap wheels would mean the end of the day for both of us.

The penultimate climb comes. Can't remember from the map...one, two, three miles long? I am just mindlessly chewing up rpms now. I'm third of four in our group. Mike is out ahead, but cutting diagonals across the course. Red/white tails him, then me. Chronometro behind me. He'd told me he didn't have many matches left, but I keep waiting for him to pass me like everyone else has.

Mike pulls off and dismounts. I approach the feed zone, still on the climb, but after all this, it feels like a flat. Shift and hammer. I put away chronometro for good. Red/white is out ahead but pretty far. We approach the turn for the finish. He's probably written me off, and he's chasing Kristen from BH and another woman. They've been trading spots with us for a five miles. Sometimes they're so relaxed they look like they're on a cooldown ride; other times they bury us.

I downshift and go hard on the final pitch. Twenty meters separates me from red/white, then fifteen, but he sees me and my chance is gone. A little dig and he's on the flat, 150 meters to the line, and rides away.

I finish fifteenth. As always, I have to pat myself on the back with the "little" victories: Chronometro lives in the area, and has trained here a lot, and I still held him off. Nearly half the field abandoned, not to mention half the cat 3 field as well. Still, it stings to know I was riding inside the top ten for a spell.

Mike remounted and finished 19th. Al "I'm not much of a climber" Urbanski finished 6th in the 3s, but to be honest, at this point the only way Al could surprise us would be by sprouting wings. But the out-of-nowhere hero finish of the day belongs to Adam Clark: after a rather unorthodox training strategy, fading and recovering, he finished 7th!

Hero.