This year brought a new course with rolling terrain, a nasty
hill and lots of rain. The elevation map didn’t look so bad in the tech guide,
but racing up that hill 12 times took its toll. According to Strava it was only
5% average over 800m. The majority of the rain that fell that day occurred
during our race. I am starting to believe that the weather network and I have
different ideas of what 1 mm of rain constitutes.
The first few laps were tough, and we were moving quickly.
The pack stayed together for the most part. A bigger group got away on the
third lap on the hill. This was started by an attack launched by Sean
Mackinnon. Around this time there was a
big crash in the master 1 race that left a rider on the ground for a few laps
and a few others that looked pretty scraped up.
About midway through the race I was starting to think I
wasn’t going to make it through the race. My power on my rides this past week
has been lower than normal and I was ready to blame it on being off my peak
again. After the hill I found myself slightly off the back with Woody Marrouch
and Anthony Sreblowski. Anthony and I took a couple hard pulls each and we got
back on. After this I worked on moving up the pack, and finally decided staying
at the back was a terrible idea.
Turns out a lot of people were feeling just as bad as I was
because the peloton let up a bit on the hills for a few laps. It was still
fast, but I was able to keep my heart rate from going over 180bpm. Rivers took
this as an opportunity to attack on one of the final laps at the top of the
climb and the group let him ride away. The winner Gaelen Merritt built up a
huge gap for the win. I thought I remember seeing him talking to Anthony with 4
or 5 laps to go. He must have put himself in the pain cave to build up that
massive gap in a short time.
There were no serious attacks coming through the last lap. And
I made sure to keep a good position about fifth wheel back coming into the
final kicker. The sprint started super early, before the kicker with at least
500m to go. It was too long to try and make up any ground. I did my best to
fight through the pain and hold my position until the end.
I finished 17th on the day, and 5th in
the group sprint. I had no idea that many people had made it up the road. I was
hoping for top 15 to get my one upgrade point, but I felt really good about how I finished this race. Next up for me is the KW twilight crit and then Tour de Waterloo.
Watch how the race unfolded courtesy of Strava: here
Results: here
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