Posted: September 28th, 2009 | Author: Shawn Small | Filed under: Race Report | No Comments »
Shawn:: “Ben Verhoeven racked up a first place finish in his first cross race at the Battle of Barlow over the weekend, below is his account of the event.”
Photo from http://www.pdxcross.com/ Wishing for the bell lap. Let the guy from Salem shout out to a Clydesdale, “Riders coming!” Suck his wheel onto the grass and towards the four pack. Above me I can see my teammate Shawn wrestling to force his chain back on while shouldering his bike in a run. Past the finish line and the blessed bell now. If I can just hold on, I think it’s going to be Salem and I. This third guy is starting to feel it. I let the two of them open up a gap. We’ll meet at the run up out of the ravine. The railroad ties are spaced just so for long legs. The clamor from a group at the peak of the climb fades off as we whistle though the woods and into the cornfield where there is that damn gravel corner that always forces me wide. It’s just the three of us. Four barriers. Now it’s the two of us. Salem and I slog our way up the bumpy false flat towards the chicanes. He’s pushing the headwind. Salem looks strong. One chicane, he’s gearing up, two chicanes, he sits down and pushes his chain a few cogs smaller. I follow suit, our derailleurs clicking. Then pavement. Smooth, whining pavement. Tucked behind him into the first turn. Get my legs in order. Catch my breath. We’re out of the saddle as we crest the rise into the parking lot and the crowd. There’s a speed bump. I try to pinch the last turn, but he doesn’t give me the alley. Finish line is only ten pedal strokes away. Still out of the saddle, he throws his bike to one side. Then the other. Seven. I swing wide then back in. Five. It’s not my legs, but my face that feels flushed and pin-pricked. Swing back in. Four. Pedal. Pedal. I can feel our shoulders brush. Two. Close. Salem says something as I pass. Pedal. “Damn,” maybe. Pedal, then lunge, then LINE!
Posted: June 28th, 2009 | Author: Shawn Small | Filed under: Race Report | No Comments »
| This last weekend was the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic and, true to Utz form, the brothers idiot pre-registered and paid for our hotel before we duped anyone else into signing up for such a masochistic race as this one was, let alone securing our means for travel to and from each stage. After we figured out that no one else on the team was stupid enough to join us and no one outside of our team was foolish enough to wait until the very last second to determine where s/he was staying for the weekend, we bit the bullet, rented a car for the weekend, and learned that the two of us would be eating the entire cost of our hotel room at Cooper Spur. But I digress… Simply put, this race was brutal. Fifty-five registered in our field; 44 toed the line; and 37 finished. While neither of us are entirely satisfied with our GC results (29th for Zach and 24th for me), we are both completely happy to have finished the race without our legs admitting defeat and sending us home with our tails between our legs. Lesson #1: training needs to be focused for stage racing. Stage one: 47-mile road race, lots of climbing This stage was super fun. An 18-mile circuit race that had 5100 vertical feet of climbing, it was fast almost from the gun after the neutral roll-out. After a couple of half-hearted attacks that everyone knew were going nowhere, the climbing began almost immediately. From there, the pace was pushed at the front just to test everyone’s mettle and, sure enough, a few were spit off the back before we crested the first climb, myself included. From there, we had a long, 9-mile descent, which I used to race through the caravan and catch back on to the field. On the one short flat section of the course, we were riding into the wind, so the pace slowed, but not enough for those who had truly popped on the climb to regroup. The second climb was the same story. The front of the field drove hard to whittle down the main group a bit more. This time, I played my cards poorly. I assumed that since I had no trouble catching back on the first time around, I would be able to ride my own pace on the climb and do the same on the second go-round. Not so. I hadn’t anticipated the fact that most of the guys didn’t know the descent the first time, but would know what to expect the second time, thus allowing them to take it much faster. I crested alone again and the caravan was just out of sight. I never saw it again, even with help this time down the back side of the course and around into the wind. The grupetto would be how we came in to the finish. With about seven kilometers to go, someone in our mini-group of seven told me he couldn’t pull through on his turn, which signaled to me that it was a good time to attack. I went with one other, and we finished up nine minutes behind the leader, 14th on the stage. This was my one regret of the four days, though not my only mistake. Stage two: 18.5-mile time trial, nothing but headwind Let’s get this out of the way quickly: I confirmed to myself that I am pretty much worthless in a time trial. We started in The Dalles and headed west to Hood River. This is the windsurfing capital of the world, and the course was set to force us straight into it the gorge winds. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, but let’s just say that the Columbia River was packed with windsurfers that day. Apparently, time trial bikes actually help in a time trial. Who knew? I was passed by no less than seven riders. How many did I catch? Exactly zero. There goes another seven minutes on GC. Oh, and the guy who took the first stage, also won stage two. Lessons #2, #3, and #4: use a time trial bike for a time trial, or at the very least aero-bars; I need to work on my hour-long sustained efforts; and don’t let a seemingly tough stage get into my head. Stage three: 92-mile road race, climb after climb after ridiculous climb This course absolutely crushed our group. We started on Mt. Hood at 3300 feet and descended. Then came the first climb of the day, a category 1. No one was attacking and no one wanted to do any work, so we pretty much crawled up that climb. Then came another screaming descent. There ended up being one guy off the front before we crested that first climb, but I don’t think any of us would have accused him of attacking. He simply wasn’t willing to climb as slow as the rest of us. So, when we had pulled him back on the descent, a few riders rotated through, but again there was little willingness to do any real work. This is where is got interesting, for me at least. There was a tiny uphill that broke up the descent right around mile 25. It was enough for some of the field to slow and I was close enough to the front that I decided to attack. I made a clean break and fully expected at least one other rider to bridge up to me on the remainder of that long descent. Again, I had miscalculated. Only this time I didn’t find myself off the back, but off the front. So I went for it. I knew I could put time into the field on the next climb, a category 2. I was right about that, at least. My gap continued to grow through the next descent and climb, too. Then came the truly hard part: a long straight-away almost directly into the wind. I thought for sure I would be brought back then, but when the neutral support car gave me a split time, it had gone up slightly. After the race, Zach told me that the field all but refused to work on that stretch, which had given me the slight advantage. That edge didn’t last, though. At mile 70, after being off the front for what seemed like forever (I had been talking to myself, cursing the wind, the sun, my mind, my body, and the smell of the dead, rotting deer carcass on the side of the road), the group decided that they weren’t going to let me have the glory of victory. They ramped up the pace, split the field in half, and reeled me in. Two guys from Ten Guys Named Alex (nice dudes!) attacked with me in sight. When they caught up to me, I stood to try to match their pace, but found that my legs had deceived me. The field quickly gobbled me up and spit me out the back. I dropped back to another support car and downed the bestest-tasting Coca-Cola I’ve ever had in my life. I sat up and waited for another group, which happened to have Zach in it, and soft-pedaled up the remaining 18 miles of uphill to the finish, another 29 minutes in arears. It was in large part due to his work that I was able to finish this stage. Stage four: Hood River Criterium A crit is a crit is a crit. It was fast, there were primes, it strung out around the nearly 180-degree turn, there was a crash on the final lap. Yada yada yada. I’ll definitely be doing this race next year, and can’t wait until I get another chance to do a stage race (there are plenty here each season – OBRA and the Northwest in general pretty much beat all). |
