Tour de Bloom: Stage 2-4 Race Review

I raced like garbage but I learned a lot.

Given how optimistic I was for after the first road race you’re probably expecting part 2 to be all about podiums and prize money, but alas, I need to learn how to use my power. Here’s what went down.

TT

I was actually looking forward to the TT. I woke up early, ate a good breakfast, and arrived an hour before my start time. I got in a good warm up, was able to hold my TT position the entire 20 minutes, and did exactly the power I was aiming to. The only issue is my pace was a lot slower than the bulk of the cat 3 field. I lost another two and a half minutes on the GC, not that I had high hopes of a GC result at that point anyway.

Criterium

I haven’t ever had a good result in a crit before, but I’ve learned from all the mistakes that I’ve made and was ready to fix all of them, which I did quite successfully. I started in the second row so I wouldn’t get yo-yo’d to death. Just I started behind a guy who clipped in about as well as Matt Stevens, and since I was behind him got shot to the back of the field, not where you want to be in a crit.

Thankfully the course featured fast corners, like really fast corners, like can SAFELY go 50kph through all of them. Around ten minutes in I told myself I need to get off the back and with the use of cornering skills I didn’t know I had and all the matches I had to burn I got to the front in two laps. The issue with that is that I burned all my matches. I stayed in the front for a while (I was starting to blow up, I couldn’t count) and then coming around corner 2 I cracked. I went from top 10 entering corner 2 to see the lead car exiting corner 2 as I went into corner 3. At least if I’m going to blow up I did it majestically. 

Road Race #2

I was feeling good about this one. I was told to expect gentle rolling terrain with a brutal crosswind. I would describe it more as constant kickers with a gentle crosswind, but I’m still a Manitoban at heart. I was expecting to be racing for Cole, one of the guys I came down with. He was sitting 5th on the GC so I was willing to do whatever I could to help him move up, or at least not move down, after all, GC prizing went down to 5th.

The course started with a long headwind stretch. I sat in most of the way and just rolled to the front before the first corner (which was ten minutes into the race, talk about a course that suits me). I took the corner at the front and guttered the field to see what they would do. They had none of it, within five seconds there was a group passing me on the other side of the road, which is to be expected, I just wanted to read the field.

I attempted to do the same thing going into the third corner, but a group passed me and said let's spice it up a bit as they passed. I chuckled a bit after the corner because I was in a draft just chilling. That is until Cole got a puncture. I waited for him in case the neutral service car wouldn’t let him draft, thinking we could work together to get back to the main field. The only issue is that the neutral car was letting him draft and if anything sped up once I got in the draft. I got popped out of the draft within 20 seconds and started the hardest time trial effort I’ve ever done.

About 20 minutes later I had to accept that I couldn’t catch by myself and sat up, forming the DNF groupetto. I caught up to a couple people, and we rolled in to finish lap 1 at a very casual pace. I challenged one of my fellow groupetto members to a gentleman’s sprint (you line up a couple hundred meters from the finish and sprint). Sadly he took this as a normal sprint, but hey, we’re racing to find out who doesn’t finish first, and he had a nice bike, and it’s harder to get mad at a kid with a nice bike.

Reading this you might think I failed pretty miserably, and you’d be right, I’m not incredibly happy with how I performed this weekend, and even more let down with my lack of strategy, but I did learn a lot about how (and how not) to move through a large field of riders, when to wait for riders, and I found out just how far I need to get to be able to perform like I did back home. It’s never enjoyable to perform badly in a race, but it’s always healthy to have a reality check. Hopefully next time I race I’ll be writing about a sweet victory.

Stay cool internet ;)