The COP hill is 4 minutes of lung searing pain, plus or minus. I was tired signing in, and while every normal racer was warming up sensibly, I had to have a nap in the back of my car.
They group 3 riders at a time into 1 minute intervals for the climb, but my "group" only had one other rider - Cyrus Kangarloo. Yes, we're both Cat 2, but let's be honest, we're not in the same league at all. I stayed within a few meters of him to turn 2, then had to race "my" race. If I wanted to explode half way in, I probably could make it two minutes with him. People cheer from the side, some even say "go Erik". I appreciate it, but I don't have the slightest idea who they were, total whiteout set in at about the two minute mark. It was all I could do just to see the turns in the road.
When all was said and done, I couldn't even see Cyrus finish. He came in at 3:31 which was good enough for 5th. I was 4:07 which was 4th last in Cat 2, but actually I don't feel bad about it. I'm actually happy with that result I'd say. I suspect there's a chance I could break 4 minutes with a proper race taper... or even 2 fewer glasses of wine and 2 fewer beers last night. It took about 10 minutes of spinning to get the lactate overload feeling out of my system, I've got the seared lung cough going now still 2.5 hours later. Really wish my SRM was back from getting batteries so I could have recorded it, there's no way I can do a 4 minute interval that hard without it being a race.
Mckee's time was a hair slower, but we're talking seconds. Looks like we're shaping up to be very equal partners, which is nice.
Mical won the women's overall. Super happy for her, she's had a great season so far, and knows how to turn up the suffering on these short bursts.
Criterium is tomorrow, where Bakke can have his ass handed to him by the Symmetrics guys whose quads are twice the size of mine. Maybe I can be a take solace in the fact that the $300 first prize looks like a tough way to make a living ; )
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