Rubber Side Down

Photo Courtesy of SKN Photography

My introduction to multiday bike racing was the 2010 Tour of the Catskills, a 3-day stage race. I had a great time there last year and vowed to come back in 2011. Having upgraded to Cat 4 in the interim, and having noticed that the combined Cat 1-4 masters category was perhaps a little more competitive that I really needed, I decided to race Cat 4 open. My "tune-up" race for the Catskills was the Tour of the Hilltowns 2 weeks earlier, which has a similarly hilly profile, but unfortunately I managed to crash early in that race and then spend 2.5 hours chasing the peleton while bleeding from several spots and trying to stay hydrated on one of the hottest days of the year. I've heard it said that training for bike races is all about making deposits in the pain bank from which you make withdrawals on race day, so on that basis the Hilltowns was a great day of training. I'm pretty sure the only reason I finished it was because I had watched so many pros crash in the Tour de France and keep racing (most notably Johnny Hoogerland). All things considered I got off pretty lightly but I was still wearing bandages on race day (as the photo above illustrates - at least I was easy to spot in the peloton.)

In contrast to last year, which started with a real hill-climber's time trial stage, this year had a much flatter and longer ITT for stage 1, and my hope here was just to avoid losing too much time to people who would be better suited to that event. I only manged one practice TT race all summer, and my average speed of 22.5 mph for 10 miles wasn't that impressive. After a bit of adjustment to bike position I was hoping I might at least be able to break 23 mph for the 12 mile stage at Catskills. I was also hoping that among the Cat 4s in this race there wouldn't be too many TT specialists with fancy bikes, and on that point I was not disappointed. In the end I was pleasantly surprised to average close to 24 mph, covering the 12 mile course in 30:11, 43rd out of 71 and less than 4 minutes down on the leader.

I discovered that one of the problems of stage racing is that you go to bed with both pre-race stress and post-race excitement, which doesn't necessarily make for a great night's sleep. But I woke up feeling pretty good in the morning, and ready to tackle the first mass-start stage of the race, a 65 mile hill fest that includes the infamous Devil's Kitchen. This climb of about 1300 feet is at a 12% average grade but much steeper in sections, rivaling the steepest sections of Mount Washington and much steeper than anything in the Tour de France. It also comes very close to the end of the stage. There are some hairy descents before you get there, and the official who read us our starting orders made sure to remind us that it's not worth taking risks on the descents. I hit 45mph a few times on the downhills, and even at that speed I was losing ground to some of the heavier and more adventurous racers. I also have a dim memory of possibly pinching my rear tire on a bump near the end of one such descent, and feeling relieved when it didn't go flat. But as we got further into the race I started to sense that the tire was losing air, and around 44 miles I hit a bump and it went completely flat. Ironically, this was almost the same spot at which I had flatted in this race last year. The wheel van pulled up behind me, but there didn't seem to be a great sense of urgency in getting me a wheel. I said several times "Shimano 9-speed" and was given a wheel and finally got on my way again, and shortly afterwards established that it was actually a 10-speed. A later conversation with the wheel man convinced me that this important distinction of componentry was lost on him. Amazingly enough, I was able to get a fair number of the gears to work smoothly, and I set about chasing the peleton. It was hard work and I had been stopped long enough - about 2 and a half minutes - that I couldn't even see them. And I didn't want to arrive at the base of the Devil's kitchen completely cooked, as it were. Eventually I was caught by a group of stragglers and the 4 or 5 of us worked together to the bottom of the DK. I was very glad for the company.

The Kitchen was just as bad as I remembered it. I had actually changed my rear cassette before the race to improve my gearing for the climb, but of course that cassette was sitting in the wheel van now. GPS data shows that my slowest mile up the climb was a 10:44 - slower than anything I did at Mount Washington on bike or on foot. But it wasn't as bad for me as for some other folks, and I was soon passing the rear of the peloton that I'd lost when I flatted. Quite a few folks were walking, and I came extremely close to joining them but resolved not to do so as long as I could keep the bike upright. The top half of the climb starts to get a bit less steep and soon enough I was over it with just a few miles to cover to the finish. Heading down the other side I caught or was caught by a handful of other riders and soon we had a nice, fast-moving paceline heading into the finish. I was happy to be done but frustrated to have lost the peloton with a flat. I have had 4 flats in the last 5 years, and 3 of them have been in races, which doesn't seem reasonable from a statistical point of view. But I'm thinking that it might be related to the fact that I don't often exceed 40mph on my training rides either.

Results showed that I had moved all the way from 43rd to 42nd with this stage, and lost about 8 more minutes to the leaders. 2.5 of those minutes were from stopping for the flat, but I can't tell how many more I'd lost by being solo for so long after the flat. Not the day I'd hoped for.

Another night of not-great sleep as I looked back over the day and hoped for some redemption on the final stage. While the final stage lacked the steepness of the Devil's Kitchen, it actually had more total climbing, and I was hoping I could get over the first climb near the front. That hope was dashed pretty quickly as we started up the 1500 foot climb for the first "King of the Mountains" points - I know how hard I can work when I'm going to be climbing for a long time, and there's not much point pretending otherwise when the leaders pull away from you. But settling into the level of effort that I could sustain did allow me to pass a lot of people who had overcooked the first part of the climb, and so while I never threatened to take the lead, I did get over the top in something like 15th place. The descent that followed was really something, with plenty of turns to keep things interesting, and a group of about a dozen folks coalesced as we made our way down, hitting a top speed of 49.5 mph. We formed a good paceline as we headed on to the second big climb of the day.

The only way to make a hill less steep is to zigzag. Yellow line rule? Who cares?
Photo courtesy of SKN Photo

The photo above illustrates just how hard many folks found the last big climb of the race. In a move that I was pretty pleased with, I moved my way up to the front of our paceline right before the climb started and was able to break off the front of the group from the start of the climb. Of the dozen folks who had been together between the two climbs, I was second over the top, and quickly joined forces with the first guy, who happened to have been one of my companions the prior day. We caught one more straggler from the group in front of us and tried to see if we could stay clear of the folks who had been with us before the climb. But we were 3 small guys and before too long we were caught by a few of the bigger guys from behind, who were better at descending. Soon we had a good little group working well together and trying to make the best time we could for the last dozen miles. At one point a pair of guys from the Speedwell team launched a perfect attack and got clear, but as soon as the next hill came along we caught them again. We worked hard over the last few miles and as we shed a couple of riders off the back there were about 7 of us as we hit 2k to go.

I know that I have one of the worst sprints around so with about 500m to go I decided to see if I could manage a sneak attack, and it sort of worked as I did get off the front with one other rider, but then we turned for home and it was a 300m uphill finish. Much as I like hill climbing, those short hills do not play to my strengths, as I just don't have the explosive power, and 5 of my 7 companions powered past me into the finish. But I did manage 22nd overall on the stage, and moved up to 25th in the General Classification.

In the end, I was happy with the result. One thing that I got from the last day was the satisfaction of doing the stage to the absolute best of my ability - I feel like there was no point at which I failed to be aggressive when it mattered, and there was no way I could have hung with the leaders on that first KOM climb. Furthermore, I finished right behind Dan Moon, with whom I finished every stage last year. Had I not flatted on stage 2, I expect I would have been with him that day as well, which would have moved me a few places up the GC but not enough to really matter. So I can look at the flat with more equanimity than I did after the end of stage 2.

They say the best way to become a good rider in your 40s is to do a lot of riding in your 30s. Well, I missed that, but it's not too long for me to see if I can be a good rider in my 50s.