Ste. Gen RR

My goal in this race was to try to get a decent finish (top 10) and stay in the lead group since my fitness hasn't been there after a long break over the winter. I could tell my fitness has been coming around and yesterday was a good guage. I also made a big move about a week ago to go with compact cranks for hilly road races to give me a little more low end for climbing. In the end I actually increased my top end also by going with an 11-25 cassette instead of my 12-25 so it was a win win situation. As for a team, we hadn't really talked about anything special and we were more or less in survival mode and wait and see what transpires. Ron is usually our strongest rider so if we could help him we would.

Early on Denny went on a break by himself. I thought it was a little early, but his lead grew to the point he was out of sight. Not bad I thought, so I decided to go to the front and try to slow things down a bit. Myself and Ron were up there and accomplished this for a few miles, but soon Bigshark and Momentum were starting to chase. We just sat third or fourth wheel. I could tell we were going to catch them so I asked Ron if he was going to counter, but he said no. We did catch them and then soon after the KOM came. I managed to make it up in the top 15-20 guys safely in the field. After the KOM everyone was back together and Denny asked me about his rear wheel. I told him it looked a little low, and that he may want to get a wheel from the wheel truck. A few other guys told him the same thing.

As the second lap came I started to feel a cramp coming in my right leg so I kept drinking and eating. I only brought three bottles and started to worry about having enough. A few miles into the second lap I looked back and noticed that we hadn't really dropped anybody, at least that's what it seemed like to me. It started to worry me because my initial thought was that I was in bad shape and everybody else was doing just fine. A few other guys took off one by one and nobody chased them down. At this point there was three or four guys up the road with Bigshark controlling the peleton. The field was getting a little antsy, but nobody wanted to chase down the break. After the first climb on the second lap I finally saw Jeff and Jeremy who I hadn't seen all race. Two more guys got away, and then another group of about seven went. I grabbed the last wheel on that train, but then really felt the cramps and backed off and got back in the peleton. That break was then quickly caught. Finally we got to the KOM and my legs felt fine. I spun up the hill in good position. Yielding looked really good and had about 20 yards on me. We reorganized and dropped more riders and were down to about 15-20 for the run into the finish. I got into a sweet spot up the final hill to the finish. The pace picked up until about 200m to go and Aaron Rauls/Ghisallo made a dash. It was sprint on and I passed two riders. With the five from the break, I got 10th out of the sprint for 15th place. In hindsight, I was feeling pretty good at the time and thought about attacking in the last uphill to the finish. I decided to play it safe though and stayed with our group. I'm not sure where everybody else finished. In the end I went through three bottles(two accelerade, one water), 5 GU's, granola bar, and a banana. I never did completely cramp.

I achieved my goal of staying in the lead group, which ended up being the second group after letting a break go. It wasn't a top 10, but in the company I was in for the finish I'll take it. It was certainly a weird race as nobody got organised to chase down the initial break including us. We had five guys in the peleton and could have had a good shot had we kept Ron up there. Next to Bigshark and The Hub I think we had the most guys besides maybe Trek and Gateway.

This has to rate up there in favorite races and Ste. Genevieve was a great host city with excellent facilities. Todd did another great job organizing this race. The course had a little bit of everything, climbs, rollers, and fast sections. I did this race two years ago and remembered it killed me. I had bad memories of the climbs. I had put in a lot of miles(50 then 20) the two days prior to that race thinking that was what I needed and I paid for it. This year I kept my riding to a minimum prior to the race and while it was still a hard race it wasn't as hard as I remembered.

Winghaven is up this weekend and will be another true test as it will be a CAT 2/3 race. The way it works out is that I'll have five days off prior to this race and I'll have to do all I can to stay off the bike, at the very least keep the miles to a minimum.