Tour of Batenkill/Calabogie Classic-DSJ

Weekend number one of racing in the books, well I guess it' number two, but last week was more like a ride for me. So we packed the car and headed out to Salem NY to do the Tour of the Battenkill. Dollar for dollar the best race I've ever done...mainly cause the organizer waived our entry fee and we had host housing at a Christian Youth Centre. That scared me a little bit at first, but the place was great, the people running the facility were really organized and the Centre was on acres of beautiful land nestled in the Adirondacks a few hours South of Lake Placid.

Anyways men's race 130km on paved/unpaved roads, steep climbs, lots of gradual climbs, technical race in the way that positioning was key. Lessons learned last year from Tour de Toona, if you are in a field of 100 riders, you need to be in the first ten up the climbs. For the "flats" if you are not moving forwards you are moving backwards. It's kind of fun now that that stuff is not second nature but it's just kind of natural. We didn't really have time to do the whole course, but rode the last little bit and drove a little as well. There was one section that stuck out in mind as a critical section, a turn off the county road onto a steep unpaved climb.
I positioned myself well in the race and tried to get the two other Jet Fuel boys to do the same, but they had a little bad luck and ended up a little further back then they should have been.

I made the selection in the front group and followed wheels, stayed out of the wind and out of trouble all day. I chopped to the inside of the rode and tucked myself into second wheel on the critical section, really had to moderate my efforts trying to cover moves since I was solo in the 20-30 man selection and I only had two bottles all day, two small ones at that. My legs felt great but my head felt like it was going to explode and I started hallucinating a little...just a little. My mouth felt like I ran out of sweat and body sucked out the fluid from face to keep my legs moving. I poached a bottle of coke from a spectator in last 20 km, but the damage was already done. I almost got dropped...no I did get dropped on the last climb as my legs cramped up...but I fought my back on the downhill through loose gravel descents and some semi technical riding. Belgian style, I put it in a huge gear 54-12 and just ripped the shit out of pedals until I regained contact. I tried to position myself well for the sprint, 2 guys were a few hundred meters off the front, they must have went on the climb...So ended up 15th, not bad especially since I was two bike lengths from a podium...so mission accomplished. Limiting factor was hydration...but what can you do. Next time I'll bring some Canadian Maple syrup and see if anyone wants to trade for water...or I'll make sure we drag someone to the feed zone.

Tasha finished 4th in a chase group of 5 sprint finish, a pretty solid result. She tried to go a little too early in the race and had no teammates to feed off of, paid for it a little, but sill pretty happy about her result.
She finished 3rd yesterday at Calabogie with some great teamwork, another decent result coupled with the fact that Saturdays race and travel were taxing, a good way to impose some early season stress by hitting a double weekend.

Dave B, Kev and I rode yesterday with a semi structured plan. I wasn't really too worried about the result, mainly these early season races most have a purpose, the purpose can sometimes be a good result, but there is a lot to be gained by exercising some tactic. What do these guys learn if I blast up the rode and get in the break, nothing. So we waited stuck to the plan and it almost worked, we would have needed to execute it a little sooner. It was nice to see those boys tear themselves apart though, good on them. I ended up 7th, not bad considering my avg. power for 3/4 of race of negligible.

It's a little hard to swallow your pride and get beat locally, especially since for most of the people in the community, these are "the races", but these races must be sacrificed for later success.

Just because there is "a race", doesn't make it an "A race". Nice, I just came up with that.

DSJ