Today was relatively flat, but with smallish rollers all day. I felt good at breakfast... so I decided I'd just burn matches to stay in the group as long as possible since flat + headwind are totally better to do that way. This plan coaxed out probably the dozen hardest intervals I've done in the last year.
The river crossing had too much water to cross, so surprise surprise, our day got longer by 11k for a total of 154. Who needs short days?
Intervals came from the Dutch skinny climber twins drilling it on hills, to the pro triathlete drilling it on crosswinds so we could all gutter ride with no draft, to Marco drilling it on the rollers to yo yo the group. All hard. To add insult to injury, a farmers car went by on a muddy road and showered me with mud from a puddle. There was so much it felt like I got hit with 3 snowballs at once.
I held on till about 70k. Didn't remount at a river crossing fast enough and was off. Got going again at a sensible pace and yellow jersey Gjis came by trying to get back on after a mechanical. I drafted him at mach speed on the flats, then when it went uphill I was off so fast it wasn't even funny. He puts out a lot of power for that body size, I'd guess he's at or under 120lbs.
It's almost laughable... had 75k to go, or about half way, had just ridden my hardest hammer ride of the year 7 days into riding overload, and I wasn't going to get to massage and finish line snacks without 75k more of headwind. I got that REM(?) song in my head "everyone hurts sometimes" but for me it was "everything hurts sometimes.". Legs were fried, arm was sore, hands have had enough bumps to last a while, butt is sore, and feet sore from putting power to the pedals. Neck sore too.
Anyway that's a long bike race, so quit whining and tune it out. Everyone has lots of sore bits by this point. On my own in the wind I didn't want to slow up too much, thought I could still catch a bunch of people. There were guys in the group who I knew wouldn't ride hard solo, plus it's not over till its over. Rode alone and saw two guys at a water stop who didn't even try to ride with me. Solo for another 40 mins till three Portuguese came up - guys riding together who won't even socialise with other Portuguese. I drafted for a bit after they did the blow by, did some rotations, but got tired of them pulling through by a millimetre before cutting into the line then soft pedalling. Got to a river crossing and the guy who was behind me came through and put his bike right in front of mine to remount even though I was about to hop on - so either entirely oblivious or being a jerk, so I just decided I'd try my chances into the wind on my own. A few gates came up that were jumpable, but even without that I put solid time into them by the finish.
Kept looking across the fields and ended up reeling in 3 more; felt good at the end chasing down a few across the fields, including a Spanish guy that's got a Cannondale Flash fully weight weenie'd, I swear it weighs like what my road bike does.
Craig and Jon stayed in the lead pack... but the lead pack didn't catch a few of the early starters so Kate got 4th, Craig got 5th, and Jon came in just a smidge after when the ending got strung out, I think 14th. I managed 18th which drained a lot but was fun to actually feel a pack racing dynamic again instead of just slogging.
This race is hard even without the other little bits of bonus distance thrown in. It dawned on me while riding that it's about the distance of La Ruta, then TR, then BCBR all rolled into one 9 day blast. The amount of race food we've gone through is nothing short of amazing - we're now pooling so we can buy less stuff here (less to carry home). But laid out at the start, if anyone said you were going to eat that pile in a week, it'd seem just ridiculous.
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