When trying to prepare for this race I entered 3 local races back in VA. 2 were shortish road races but the third was a Criterium in Richmond. The Crit was probably the scariest thing I have ever done. The high speed corners with some riders failing to hold their line resulted in several touching wheels and a couple of people being forced off the road. There must have been 4 or 5 big crashes during that first Crit so I was a little apprehensive about the Crit stage of the Tour of the Gila.
The Crit took place in the centre of town. The Cat 4/5 men went off at 0815 and we had to do 15 laps of the course which was a little over 1 mile long. The course was fairly traditional with four 90 degree left hand turns. The start finish straight was wide and fast with a big fast sweeping corner at the starting end (lined with a tyre wall) and a fairly narrow turn at the other end. The back side of the Crit had a short steep climb and then a rapid descent into a fast left and then the even faster left back onto the starting straight and hopefully not into the tyre wall.
I cycled from the hotel down to the start line and en route I tried to get in a number of hill repeats in order to warm up properly. During those hill repeats I could really start to feel the effects of Stages 1 and 2 in my legs. It is important to warm up well for Crits (and Time Trials) as they start off so quickly and if you are cold you can easily get left behind before you have a chance to warm up. Before the start of the race I watched the 3/4 women finish their race and chatted with another 4/5 man who had never done a Crit before.
I was feeling reasonably happy as I lined up until I heard the referees asking that anyone who had not signed in sign in. I had completely failed to appreciate that I needed to sign anything. I knew the Pros signed in but I didn’t realise I had to. I have never signed in for a race before but I guess that a stage race is different. I rushed over to sign next to my number and then before I knew it the gun was going off. There was no get set and the gun took everyone by surprise as 70 guys struggled to clip in and get going.
The race started off fast, as expected, but nothing that I couldn’t hold onto. I found out from Wendy that a number of riders did get dropped in those first couple of laps. I knew I wasn’t fast enough to win any of the sprints so I tried to keep myself in the top 20 or so hoping to avoid any big crashes at the back. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were no crashes (at least that I was aware of) there were of course a couple of close calls but the race was generally pretty clean. The two sections that I found the most nerve racking/exciting were the crest of the hill on the back straight where I was putting a lot of power into the pedals and as the back of the bike was unweighted the back wheel would squirrel a bit and then the very fast left hander on the finish straight where this giant tyre wall was trying to suck you in.
Before too long we were on the last lap and the pace went crazy. I sprinted hard and managed to finish 24th. Although generally I was not too tired the last sprint had left me feeling a little sick for a couple of minutes. We crossed the line at 38:13 which meant that we had averaged about 25.5 mph. The Pros were not due to start until after 3pm so we had plenty of time to go back to the hotel take an ice bath, change and come back to watch their race.
Back on our corridor at the hotel it looked like team Ouch were in their team brief and outside were 7 very shiny very new Kuota bikes lined up against the wall.
Floyd Landis on the way to line up
First corner
Lance working hard
The Pros race was pretty impressive to watch. Although they had to do 40 laps they still averaged 27 mph. Lance did a lot of work during the race trying keep Levi in the lead. Apparently Levi's tyre came off with only a couple of laps to go and he had to get on Chris Horner’s bike to finish but I didn’t get to see any of that drama. A crash toward the end of their race upset all the organised lead outs and the race was won by a relative unknown, Van Uden, from Land Rover – Orbea, he looked pretty pleased with himself.
Van Urden takes the win
That night we celebrated Ben's first birthday and he made short work of his cake.
Although I finished with the pack I still moved up the GC one place to 35th and I was 0:14:22 off the leader. 3 Stages down and only one to go but the last stage was the infamous Gila Monster.
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