First off, this is a ridiculously long post filled with recaps from a long weekend including four bike races.  If you’re into bike racing, you’ll probably enjoy it.  If you don’t know a ton about the sport, you may wonder what on earth I’m talking about.

So, let’s get the basics out of the way:  I took third place in the general classification (overall standings) for my category out of 80 riders!  Now the details.

First, it’s important to know how stage racing works.  While there are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places awarded for each stage, the overall stage race winner is determined by cumulative race time for all the stages.  If your time starts at the beginning of each stage and stops when you cross the finish line, and if you finish with a group in a bunch you are all awarded the same time as the lead rider in that group.

STAGE 1

The first stage was a 40 mile road race on a 20 mile loop with one moderate 1.5 mile climb just east of The Dalles, OR.  The race was made really interesting by extremely strong West to East winds that resulted in a 20-25 MPH headwind on the 2nd half of the course and a big tailwind on the first part of the course.

After starting off mid-pack, I moved up to the top 15 riders, where I stayed for pretty much the entire race.  In an 80 rider field, I didn’t want to be very far back even if being up front meant a bit more work into the wind.  In the first lap beginning with the tailwind we cruised along at 30+ MPH pretty easily.  Early on, things got a little exciting as a dog ran onto the course right in front of the field, and straight in front of the rider in front of me.  We both locked up our breaks and I waited to react and go left or right around him because I was pretty sure he was going to hit the dog and flip over his bars.  Somehow he managed to avoid most of the dog, but ran over one of its paws.  I assume it was okay, and everyone stayed upright.  Once we turned into the headwind, the pace slowed considerably, and the climb at the front was fairly difficult with a strong headwind.  On the descent we would have done 30-40 MPH without the wind, but with the wind we had to work to maintain 15-20 MPH downhill.

Early in the second lap, Pat, one of my teammates, casually rolled off the front of the field when we were approaching the tailwind section.  The field was going really slowly, and when one rider made a half-hearted attempt to attack and bridge up, I quickly caught his wheel and passed him.  No one followed me, so I casually rolled right up to Pat and just like that we had a two man Team Oregon breakaway.  We laughed at the bizarre situation and figured that while we couldn’t stay off the front into the headwind, we did want to keep the main field’s pace high to make sure the considerable number of riders off the back of the race didn’t catch back on.  We set a fairly steady moderate pace and at one point probably had 30 seconds on the field before they came to their senses and reeled us back in.  The climb the second time was no worse than the first, but there was a 2nd small climb after the larger one where a couple riders sprinted up the hill and I had to dig deep to keep up.  The field remained together going into the finish, and I didn’t find a particularly good spot for the sprint and ended up taking 23rd in the stage out of a finishing lead group of 37 riders.  My only goal for the stage was to not lose any time on the race leader, and I was happy to have accomplished that.

STAGE 2

Stage 2 was an inidividual time trial (race against the clock) on an 8 mile course that was slightly uphill for four miles followed by a turnaround and four miles back down the hill.  I felt good in the time trial, but I felt like I’ve time trialed stronger in the past.  I went fairly hard from the start, but had a bit too much left for the end of the race and spent the last mile going all out.  When I got to the finish, all I could say to my teammates before gasping for air to catch my breath was “my 30 second guy was fast!” – which he was (they sent riders off in 30 second intervals, and I never managed to catch the rider that started in front of me).  It turns out he took 3rd place.  I took 7th place and ended up doing a time 1:05 slower than the stage winner.  This put me in 7th place overall for the stage race.

STAGE 3

Stage 3 was a nice, wide-open four corner criterium in The Dalles downtown.  They called the top ten riders from the field in the general classification to the line first, and since I was 7th that included me.  It was really nice to start at the front of the field rather than having to work my way up.  In a criterium it’s miserable being at the back and having to sprint out of the corners due to the slinkee effect that occurs from slowing and speeding up in the pack even when the pace at the front of the race is constant.  Our race was 30 minutes, and I got a good start and sat 4th wheel from the start.  During the criterium, I didn’t want to drop back since it’s difficult to move back up, so I spent much of the race in the top 5-10 riders, and nearly the entire time in the top 20.  I attacked off the front once and chased down a solo break just ahead of the field, but he didn’t have enough strength to work with me and after a lap or so off the front we drifted back into the pack.  The race was very safe with no major incidents, and going into the sprint I was hoping for a top 10, but the rider in front of me out of the last corner slowed up in his sprint very quickly and I had to brake to avoid him, which is the last thing you want to do in a sprint.  I dropped a ways backwards and ended up 23rd in the stage.  However, once again I didn’t lose any time on the leaders so I was still in 7th place overall after the race.

STAGE 4

Going into stage 4 I figured it would be the decisive stage for the overall race.  The course had a massive 5 mile climb up 1700 feet elevation, a 7 mile descent that reached speeds in excess of 50 MPH, a second rolling climb over several miles in the gorge, a technical cornering descent of the Rowena Loops on the historical Columbia Gorge highway, and a rolling flat 7 mile section with a nice gentle headwind up to the finish line.  It’s a 27 mile loop that we got to do twice.  A brutally hard race, and some of the most spectacular scenery I’ve seen in a bike race.

Check out this video of the Rowena Loops on a motorcycle.  We were taking the corners at a very similar/insane speed.

The base of the big climb came only two miles into the stage, and I moved to the front of the field before the climb.  I wanted to be in the top 10 riders in case the group started to break up or so I could go with any attacks on the climb to try to get in a break.  I had decided the night before that while I was happy with 7th overall, I wasn’t going to settle for 7th and so I was willing to risk cracking and losing my 7th place in favor of trying to place better.  The climb was long and the pace was fairly high during the first lap.  I figured it would take significant attacks to break the field apart, but I was hoping the field would shatter.  I hadn’t looked back down the climb until we came to a switchback nearly 2/3 of the way up the climb, and when I did I was amazed to see the field gone.  A few straggling riders were in sight, but a small group of us were off the front.  We got to the top of the climb and tried to organize to paceline down the descent to avoid having riders catching us downhill, but we never got particularly organized.  At the bottom we regrouped a bit going into the second climb and figured out who was in the break.  We had 9 riders in the break, and it was a very select group.  3rd, 4th, 7th (me), 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and 17th overall were in the break.  We struggled to form a well-functioning paceline in the break, and with about 5 miles to go we recieved word from a race official that the remnants of the main field (about 25 riders) were less than a minute behind us.  Worse yet, the overall race leader who had been dropped on the first climb managed to chase down our break.  None of us were particularly happy to see him show up in the group, since we were looking to overtake his lead.  A few of us were working well together and started talking a bit about how to improve the situation.  We agreed that a move had to be made on the second time up the long climb to lose all but the strongest riders in the break.

The climb came around the second time and about half way up the two strongest climbers in the group went to the front and gradually increased the pace from fast to very fast to blisteringly fast.  They held a 12-13 MPH pace up 7-8 percent grades for nearly three miles.  I dug in for all I was worth and tried to hold the wheel of the rider in front of me.   The climb put me in a world of hurt, but somehow I managed to get to the top still in the lead group.  We checked out the situation and found that there were now 6 of us left in the break – 4th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th, and 17th places overall going into the stage.  This was perfect, because we all had a lot to gain as we were between 45 seconds and 1:30 behind the race leader that we had dropped again the second time up the climb.  We had also dropped the 3rd place rider, who we could tell was hurting.  We started a paceline on the long descent, and then we united for one purpose – to put at least a minute between our group and the race leader chasing behind us.

We talked amongst ourselves and agreed to work together until the end of the race with less than 1 kilometer to go.  We got a paceline going, and the organization and fluidity of the break was among the best of those I’ve ever been in.  On the flats we had a smooth paceline, on the climbs the stronger climbers led the way, and on the rowena loops descent I went to the front and kept the pace high through tight corners since I’m a fairly confident descender.  We managed to stay away from everyone chasing us, and assuming we had accomplished our goal of putting enough distance between ourselves and the race leader, we were all likely to take 1st through 6th in the final overall standings.  Joe Prettyman of Beaverton Bicycle Club was the rider in 4th place prior to the last stage who was the virtual race leader on the road, and as such he took a hard pull with less than 1k to go to the finish and then sat up and didn’t go for the sprint.  Very classy move.  Just after that, Ryan Liverman from Veloce launched an impressive attack that none of the rest of us in the group could catch, and I watched my chance at 2nd overall slip away since he was only 3 seconds behind me overall before the stage.  I did everything I could to catch him, but it wasn’t going to happen, and I ended up taking 4th in the stage of the 6 riders in the break.

After a bit of a wait for results, I was able to confirm that I had indeed taken 3rd overall in the stage race, which I am very pleased with.  Our break was amazed to see that not only had we put the distance between ourselves and the 1st/3rd place riders that we needed to, but we blew away the rest of the field as we came in over four minutes ahead of the next riders to cross the line.  The race leader prior to the stage lost more than seven minutes on us just in the second lap.  Our break averaged nearly 20 MPH for the entire race, which was fast considering how difficult the course was.

Definitely one of my most consistent weekends of racing ever, and surely one of the most fun between the racing and team comradery at the house in Hood river.

Some cell phone pictures from the weekend:

The view from the house in Hood River. Thanks, Justin's parents!

The men's cat 3 criterium

GC classifications after 3 stages. I made a list of rider numbers in the top 10 and taped it to my handlebars, which was very handy in the break today to help us figure out who we had in the break.

On the podium!

My race number and the cool mug they gave us instead of medals.