This race was going to be used as a final race prep before
nationals. Due to my terrible spring, I never got many race days under me, so
this seemed like a good option. The weather turned out to be great, although there was a strong wind, and the course was the same as last year. I
had ambitions for this to be my first mass start race that went over well…
I made sure I started in a good spot, and used the neutral
start to move up slightly or at least maintain my pack position. The race
started and I continued to move up. About 15km into the race I looked down and
my garmin was gone. The tabs broke off before and I was using a dogears metal
tab attachment, and that seemed to have just let go of the garmin. Ok, but I
was still up right and had 120km to go! I moved up to where Ryan Roth was, and
noting that they weren’t letting anyone else go (asides from Andrew House and
Chris Prendegast) I was happy sitting in knowing of the head/cross wind that
was coming.
We turned into it at about 40km in, and about 2km into it I
started to feel my gears skipping. I tried to correct it with my barrel
adjuster and then got out of the saddle to climb and almost went over the bars
when the gears skipped again. I pulled over to see what was wrong and picked up
my bike and the back wheel dropped out… The quick release had opened up from a
combination of me not putting it on tight enough and some bumps on the road (I
am assuming). This would be the end for me. The pack was still 70 strong and I
couldn’t bridge the gap with the terrible wind (doesn’t help that bridging
isn’t a strength of mine). I ended up catching a group of 3, and then we worked
together for about 40km and then one guy dropped. I finished the race working
with the Lapdogs guy that was left.
Overall it turned out to be an expensive race with a missing
garmin 800 (if you found it, and want to return it, it would be greatly
appreciated!) and no results yet again. These mass starts are my Achilles heel.
Positive note is that I still managed to get a good workout in (much better
than if I rode solo at home), and ended up clocking in around 160km with warm
up and garmin searching post race (I know it doesn’t count because it isn’t on
strava…)
I am writing this after 9 hours of driving up to nationals.
So come back in a few days to see how things are panning out in Quebec!
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