The first stage was a warm-up of sorts – a short 6.5 mile 2000’ climb up Snowbowl road. Nothing I haven’t done a crap-ton of times this winter and spring, but I haven’t done it at race pace in a long while. I wish we could race down it someday, but that would be a liability nightmare – there would be carnage all over the middle of the descent.
Anyway, it was a beautiful, cool morning with temps in the 40’s. I wanted to do Masters 40+, but there were few entrants there and our group of six guys range in age from 26-47, so we opted to slug it out in Cat IV / V. 36 of us took off at 7:06am. I snapped off the back of the lead group after about 1.5 miles in and settled into my groove. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, - 15 riders later I ran out of riders to catch, and legs to push, with the exception of one guy who I got by a half wheel at the line. Ellsie had the cowbell clangin’ at 200 meters and I was glad to finish in a bit over 36 minutes. It was a personal record for me, and I could feel the effort. Won me a small medal for 3rd place that I didn’t stick around to get, but even more important… I got me some solid omnium points and bragging rights over 4 teammates. Mark W. was 30 seconds ahead of me so he took the team lead after stage 1.
The PR for me meant I went a weeee bit too hard. Actually, way too hard. I couldn’t eat solid food all that well when I got home, so D concocted a 1,500+ calorie shake including fruit, peanut butter, milk etc that got me back on track. Just in time, thankfully for stage 2 that was at 4:00pm Saturday afternoon. Here’s a pic of me leading solo break with two laps left.
OK, this is really the break of 2 with me out front and 3.8 miles to go....do ya think I took the win?
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