Its been a while i know don't start throwing tomato's and other projectiles yet though I've been on the march the last month racing a ton and doing quite well. I raced the the coveted Montreal Quebec Classic to name part of my race activities since my last post...
La Classique Louis-Garneau
Montreal-Quebec
Montreal is a...a...ah how do I put it, Long race, at 155 miles including the 20k neutral section 252k without it is enough to drive any mortal nuts.
The race is a true classic starting next to Olympic stadium in downtown Montreal and having full rolling enclosure all the way to the finish next to the Louis-Garneau factory in Quebec City. The crew I was traveling with was truly priceless M. Luther, J. Skalski, Mike Mathis, Scott Dorfdawg, Jeff Zygo, Bill Mathis and Sam Jays Girlfriend provided enough laughs to keep my gut hurting for a while.
The race starts at a very early hour of 8 am with a 20k section of neutral riding at about 20 mph. Not speaking the language is definitely a barrier as we (mainly Luther) pulled out some serious power laughs as the race director barked off where we could "make a PP", the French weren't happy with us...lol. Once we were off racing the speed never let up 29 mph became softpedling in a hurry as we were consistently in the 32, 33 mph range for the whole of the first 2 hours. A bunch of attacks were flying off the front with no success until Micheal Luther himself attacked and was off for a good 10 miles before being caught by the Jet Fuel team who was all over the front. The next move was the move of the day 13 riders got off the front quite early and hung at about 30 seconds until a massive pileup happened int he field luckily not involving any Preferred Care riders. The gap then soared to 2 minuets. By the time we hit Trois Riviers the gap wa at 5 minuets where it remained steady for the rest of the day.
The steady cross wind that plagued us the whole day was popping riders one by one the entire time and I was actually dangling for dear life a couple of times in the crosswind furry. at about mile 110 the days ride was just starting to hit me as I was having bad patches and then feeling fine again a couple of minuets later. But miracously when we hit the climbs at about mile 130 I felt great climbing the 1/2 mile assents as the pack dwindled fast.
At about mile 140 I attacked with a Craylon/ Litespeed guy and a Trek Voltswagov rider and we were making great progress until the Litespeed guy started sprinting at every pull and riders started bridging across. the peleton was now down from about 80 to about 30 at the most. Mike Mathis and i kept attacking to keep the pressure on and it was we were still maintaining a 30mph pace after over 5 and a half hours of racing.
The last climb is feared by many as it falls at the 150 mile mark and is the toughest climb in the race. It stands only at 3/4ths of a mile but it kicks to 15% as my ibike power meter told me. So basically it sucks...having never ridden this race before I've only heard of its fury and location so i was looking for it. Mike took off before the climb hoping to get a little head start on climbing it. But it didn't work the second we hit the base a jittery joes guy attacked I was quickly on his wheel now in total delirium. My bid to get over the top with him ended with about 200 meters to go where I totally came unglued and went plummeting backwards through the field which was shattered.
Over the top there was 3 groups as far as i could see because I was in the 3rd and didn't look back... Mike and I managed to bridge to the 2nd group in time for the 1st pass of the factory with 500 meters to go I was tacked onto the back of this 15 rider group so I pegged it to get close to the front where I some how found the energy to sprint and almost win out of the group.
I ended up 34th overall, which i'm happy with considering there were 7 pro teams and it was a suicidal distance. The only thing that was left to do after the race was to deal with the pain of riding and eat tons and I mean tons of food, which happens to be my profession...
Until next time which happens to be Green Mountain since Thater has past and I've neglected to write about it...
Red balls its crack in a can
R.Nye
