We woke up at 5 for a pre-fondo snack, then tried to sleep in for a while. Cindy sleep talked and asked if I had what I needed to fix my flat. I was hoping that wasn't an omen for the day.
Nice but cool morning, few speeches off the start. 988 riders got times at the end, they referenced more than that starting, but I forgot the number they said.
Felt ok off the start, was in first 10 on the climbs through town and Tunnel Mountain. Got out to Minnewanka and I felt a bit surprised that first climb cracked me off the lead group, so I think it had 8 (I would have been 9). Sort of dawned on me that I have 25h of aerobic from last week but not hard intervals, along with our surprisingly over meaty dinner last night at Bison in Banff. Adios Shawn, Jared, et al.
I sit up for next group feeling not so happy about that turn of events and we do the shortened course with 2 Minnewanka laps (bears by Louise on 1a). The two lane system was good for the Minnewanka circuit. I feel fine out 1A to Castle Junction. Tom Brodzinski was hammering away impressively. I ate and chilled as I didn't see any reason that the group was going to change for remainder of ride.
At turnaround at Castle, I measured about 3 mins ahead for lead group. Some guy in our group really was into commanding a paceline to "catch them". I didn't want to be a downer, but guy next to me laughed, and I said if we were meant to be in the lead group, we'd all have demonstrated superior power output by now. We caught one who fell off lead group.
Last few hills didn't separate the 2nd group, we came in off highway together. In retrospect I felt fine and wish I would have gone to front especially for the cattle guard coming off the highway onto Mt. Norquay road - I was behind 6, who fanned out and rode across the wood they had down on the cattle guards... so easily could have just gone up and cooked it for the last kilometre and left it to fate on who would come around at the end, since the guard made a bit of a bottleneck. But then the last bit was so narrow we just rode in our spot without passing. I didn't though... I braked to accommodate at the cattle guard, which dropped back a bit right away. One guy went up outside to try to pass, and hit a cone, and swerved in front of a truck that was going our direction. That all seemed really demonstrative of how unnecessary a high stakes finish was for a fondo, so we rode pretty normal last two corners and I rode in just behind Tom. Anticlimactic, but fun overall.
Nice ending "scene" with food and such, although I went to shower right away (town power was out which made that interesting at our hotel). Came back to see Cindy cross, she rode hard, but stopped to warm up her fingers and eat at one point, then also for someone to give her gloves. Would have been better to ride with windbreaker in retrospect.
Results are here. (note they appear fixed now). They make sense in the grand scheme, like who was in the fast groups or not. They don't super make sense though, as right now it's showing Shawn in 6th instead of the big W, even though his time is the lowest. Jared stayed right in there too which was awesome... (side note - with that much power, let's work on Jared's appetite for off road riding before next TR!) Anyway, so something's not quite right. If I just click the time column, click next page past all the zero's who presumably just didn't show up, it starts on page 22 with Shawn at lowest non-zero time, and I'm 18th by counting down the column not their place label, which makes in intuitive sense as Tom Brodzinski is right ahead of me, which is actually what happened, and given there were 7 in the lead, and a handful ahead of me as we crossed, that all checks out. Cindy was at about the half way mark overall, no lung issues, just chilly at times. She was happy after. I think they quoted lead "groups" in general being about 39km/h average... I don't have exact distance but the winners were 2:40, we were 3 mins back, and I heard someone saying 104km on the reroute course.
It's funny... I hadn't pushed that hard all week down in Breck. My legs are sore from - it's different riding adequate atmospheric pressure tempo vs. being air limited.
Although environmental "discussion" made the media pre race, it turned out not to be an issue. We did avoid part of 1A by Louise as there's bears in area. Sort of funny as yesterday as we drove in on Tunnel Mountain Road there were people getting out of cars to take a picture of a giant Elk, which doesn't seem like a good idea at all to me. Environmental groups ahead wanted an environmental impact study done (people stay in Banff hotels and drive cars on both highways all the time would be my quick one) but maybe that's just the way the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society or their spokesperson in this article use political codeword to ask "please provide us more funding us to observe the animals in Banff Park". Who knows. Either way, event went off fine from my perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment