The weather was sunny with a bit of wind ... OK ... gusty wind ... My field was scheduled to start at 11:40, so I got to have leisurely morning, leaving Castleton at 9:15 (on Saturday I left at 6:45). That got me to the Long Trail Brewery (staging area) with plenty of time to get through pre-race routines, and warm up for 30 minutes on the trainer and 10 minutes on the road. On the trainer the legs felt pretty fresh. On the bit of climb I did on the road not as much, but still not too bad.
My start time was 11:44. We went out 1 rider every 30 seconds, so I was the 8th rider to start. We started in reverse order of the GC. I was happy to have a few rabbits to chase, and I figured having the "big guns" behind me would help spur me on. Mark Rishniw, one of the cookies, lent me his TT helmet for the rac e (thank you Mark!), and I had my clip on aerobars on, and I wore my sweet Team Delphine shoe covers, but I was still "under dressed" for the occasion. There were fancy TT rigs all over the place.
I was balanced enough this weekend to take the held start and accelerated out of the saddle (really ... I was out of the saddle) and then settled in for 30 or so minutes of hard effort. The wind was gusty and when I let my head drop and the tip of the teardrop helmet went up, I could feel it buffeted by the wind. It was a good reminder to keep my head up. I have trouble gaging how much I have left and how hard I can go without blowing up, but I felt pretty empty at the finish. I passed a few riders from other fields but no one in my field and only one other woman passed me - at mile 6-ish.
My time was 31:30-ish (the link to stage two results links to stage 3 for my field) - 5.02 off the winner but good enough for 32 out of 44 starters. The winner was 1:22 ahead of second place - which utterly stunned the woman who came in second. There were large gaps between the top riders in several fields and huge gaps between first and last place riders in all fields. The tech manual said there would be time cut offs for being permitted to start the next stage - the winners time plus 20% - but it seems they let anyone who finished the TT start the road race. I guess if they used the cut off the fields on Monday would have been reduced too much.
After cruising back to the start I drove Monday's course. It looked tough... OK really hard... A decent climb from Skyship west on Rt 4 to rt 100. After that it was 20 miles mostly downhill on pavement that ranged from good to rather rough with potholes and cracks that looked a little over tire width and in the direction of travel. Note to self stay mid lane to hugging the yellow line. Hot spot sprint and shortly there after a hard right in Bethel onto North Road and immediately up a super steep pitch that kept on going and going and going - up to the QOM some 4 or so miles along. From there we descended a bit again and headed left on Prosper Rd - a dirt road. Initially it climbed and then went down and down and down (whimper). The surface was pretty good - more packed dirt than gravel and there was a clean line for most of it. Only a few potholes. From Prosper it was a right onto rt 4 and back up past the TT start and back to Skyship where the final 5 mile climb up East Mountain Rd began.
That 60 mile drive gave me plenty to think about and i decided to change my cassette to the 12-27. I also took the time to take in the views the tech manual mentioned because I didn't figure I would have the opportunity to on Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment