Oh what a day. Every now and then you have a frustrating day that is completely out of your hands. It's easy to get wrapped up and get mad at certain things, but after all, it could be a lot worse. Anyway, we just had a team dinner at Olive Garden with good company and great laughs. All is good!!
Today was tough. It was a 90 some mile road race that would go up the other side of Blue Knob. We were looking to keep our 2 top GC guys, Jacob Tremblay and Kevin Gottlieb up near the front and better yet...in the break. We were also looking to keep up with the Team GC as we were 5th going into the day. After a crazy fast start with several unpredictable turns and even more wrecks, a break was established....Kevin included. We were happy. As we neared the painful Blue Knob climb, we settled in for the pain. Jacob T inched away with a small lead group while Paul, Russ and I settled in with a chase group. We rode our race and made it up the 8k climb where we joined together with some other riders to begin the chase. We were 28 strong and would be considered the "field". We went screaming down the fast decent and began working well as a unit. We soon came up to a "T" and realized we had no support vehicles with us with no clue as to what direction we should be heading. Fast forward and before you knew it we were lost....no marshals to be found. We ended up finding Hwy 36N and headed back to Altoona for the start, cutting the course 12 miles shorter than it was intended to be. Safe to say that we were all very frustrated and after looking at the results they slotted us at being 49minutes behind the leaders for the finish. Not that it bothered me pertaining to my own GC standing, but as a whole it has destroyed our team GC hopes. A bit frustrated as I'm fairly certain we would have caught on to the leaders and put ourselves in a position to contest for the stage win. On top of that, it has moved our Team GC from 5th to 7th. On top of all of this, I've now heard that they messed up the women's Pro race as well. It's unfortunate because this is such a great race with some great roads to ride on. Unfortunately, they will need to do some reorganizing with the course markings and volunteers to marshal it. Ok....I'll stop with my rampage..... enough said.
On a brighter note. Jacob T took 16th today on the stage and has now moved into 10th on GC. With tomorrow being the last day as a crit, its more than likely that overall GC will stay the same. We will work to keep him safe tomorrow. On a personal note, I'm going for it tomorrow at the Crit. I've got some fuel to add to the fire now with today being a personal mishap. I rode the race exactly as I wanted. Not being a natural climber, I had to pace myself up Blue Knob and work to stick with the main chase group. I did just that, but than unfortunately our race day got cut short.
Tomorrow's a new day and Kenny is still here to hang out with me for the night. Tomorrow is the final day and we look to keep moving forward. After Toona, I take a break from racing and head to Kansas City to hang with a friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment