First off - ouch. Add some more ouch. All three days treated riders to high-temps, busy neutral feed zones and full fields. Celebrating the 30th running of the Cascade Cycling Classic, cyclists from all over the country (and world for that matter) made the trip out West for a week of perfect weather, great road race courses, a new downtown criterium circuit and the Skyliner time trial.The Cat 2 field was sold out with a max field of 120 or so I was told. Sure felt like that many squeezing into one lane zooming down the Sunriver cutoff. Friday's Mt Bachelor Road race featured 71 miles of undulating hills and a great uphill finish from Sparks Lake to Mt Bachelor Resort. Fresh legs abounded as attack after attack tried to create a break with the right mix of team racers. Hagen's must have had 12 guys in the field so they make sure to keep tabs on the equally large Davis team and both finally got guys up the road with about 20 miles to go. Spencer Paxson, a fellow mountain biker, did the mountain biker tactic and led the field for about 10 miles into the final climb launching the first snapshot of the GC contenders. I had a great view as they all swept by. =) Garmin file: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/9627175
Saturday featured the morning time trial 5 miles up Skyliner road from Summit High School and back and was just short enough you could really suffer and long enough, well, to suffer. Still rocking the road bike, mountain bike shoes/pedals and un-aero helmet I definitely stood out among the slough of low-slung, carbon rocketships around me. Ahhh...yeah. At least I didn't get caught by anybody till about 200 yards from the finish. Garmin file: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/9867650
The downtown Criterium finally lets the town and fans get involved in the racing, cheering on their favorite superstars like Oscar Sevilla, Ivan Domingez, Francisco Macebo, et al. as well as their local racers. The new course this year went to a standard four corner rectangle but had a 5 block straightaway on two sides making for super high average speeds. Luckily I jumped with a guy about 4 laps in and were quickly joined by 3 others to create a solid (and lasting) break. We hovered around 20-30 seconds ahead of the peloton averaging over 30 mph for the 40 min race. Unfortunately the 12-25 I was sporting on the rear cassette wasn't up to the job for the final sprint and I just missed 3rd by a bike length. (Or it could have been the record high HR acheived and 40 min above LT...nah.)Garmin file: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/9867643
Sunday...hurt. Bad. Wooden peg legs punching at pedals going around in squares. It never really got easier but at least most of the peloton seemed to lose its impetus after the first lap of constant attacks. Local course knowledge proved very beneficial as I set up for a day of moving to the front on the flats and then sagging through the field on the climbs. I foolishly tried to get in one breakaway but we were quickly reeled in. As we neared the finish, we actually slowed down and packed into the narrow, twisting confines of Mt Washington road, curses abounding and nobody willing to trust their legs for a 1km suicide sprint. All hell broke look with 300 meters to go and we thrashed into the last roundabout right and dashed to the finish.
Garmin file: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/9867621
Always nice to race in your own backyard with family cheering, home to crawl back to and no drive after the finish. Great job to the organizers and large corps of volunteers who pulled it off in style and sent a lot of racers home happy!
