Thanks to Simon and help for making a last minute effort to
get this race off the ground, I was initially going to head to NB to
participate in the Miramichi Stage Race but with a race being added to the NS
calendar it wasn’t a hard decision to decide on which race to make. The event
was well attended and all proceeds went towards NS Canada Games Cycling and in
the end I believe something close to $2500 was raised!
This week I managed to get 2 other guys to pile in my Kia
and make the relatively short trip to Falmouth, still a good 3 hour ride but
like I say “relative” to other trips. Making the trip with a few guys sure
makes time go by a lot faster as it seemed like by the time I had finished my
coffee we were rolling up Eldrigde road for registration. My brother Nick was
about to take part in his first ever bicycle race and was pretty excited, Gab
fresh from taking a year off to take care of a new “little one” was having an
internal debate on which category to race. In the end I think his head and
heart were saying Cat A but legs were saying Cat B.. I don’t think he’s seen
Jens T-shirt “Shut up Legs”.
We took off from the start line at 11am and with this
relatively flat course and only being 103Km I figured we were in for a pretty
fast race. I still don’t know what our pace was but if my heart rate was any
indication I’d say it was pretty quick. The first attack went off as soon as we
hit the first hill and since I was in a really bad position I was unable to
react and they quickly gained some ground. I don’t remember who or when we
brought them back but I attempted to bridge a couple times without success.
When we did reel them back in I tried several times to get
in the break, I stayed near the front and went with every attack. As soon as I
got caught out of position trying to recover for a few seconds Jamie Lamb
(Cyclesmith), Jay Grover (Hub Cycle) and Marty Austin (Louis Garneau) got away.
This was very bad news for me as the two strongest teams were well represented,
and even worse news which I only came to find out later in the race was that
Andrew Lesperance was racing for Cyclesmith. These 3 teams combined is almost
45% of the entire field. It was going to be a long tough day.
I again attempted to get another break making several strong
attacks but with the teams represented in the group making sure that we didn’t
get away or sitting in getting a free tow, it was getting obvious that instead
of attacking each other the rest of us not in the break were going to have to
start working together to bring these 3 guys back.
So after a couple laps of several guys taking turns on the
front and starting to make up a little ground I notice a car sitting in the
middle of the road with its 4 ways flashing and see several bikes lying on the
ground. As soon as I get by the car I see my brother standing in the ditch with
a confused/painful expression on his face. I’m thinking “O great.. What
happened”, I Quickly yell “Are you ok?” to which he responded with a nod. That’s
bike racing; it’s not a matter of if you will have a crash it’s just a matter
of when. Thankfully he had some pretty good road rash but aside from that he
came out ok (Can’t say the same for his wheels) and is looking forward to
getting some revenge this weekend. As we
hit the only hard hill on the course the
big guns attacked Andrew Lesperance (Cyclesmith), Dustin Macburnie (Louis
Garneau) and Lorenzo Catterni (Hub Cycle).
I knew this was my last chance to have a shot a victory so I
dug pretty deep and managed to stay in contact with these guys to the top of
the climb and we had a big gap to the rest of the field. I still had lots of
legs left but with the pace being as high as it was combined with the work I
was doing earlier I should have just sat in for a few minutes and allowed
myself to recover, but being as stubborn as I am I decided to work with these
guys.
It wasn’t too long after where I had enough and started to miss a turn on the front but soon got back into the rotation. I pulled right into the bottom of another small hill and near my limit Dustin attacked with Andrew and Lorenzo in tow, I slowly started losing ground meter by meter and knew I had no hope of getting back on solo. I soon sat up and waited for the remainder of the pack to catch me and as soon as they did started to get all the guys to work together. I often took double pulls as some guys had a hard time keeping things smooth on the inclines which would be enough to open small gaps which I would fill as I knew keeping this train working smoothly was the only hope we had of reeling anyone back in. At this point there were 6 guys up the road and only a handful of laps remained.
It wasn’t too long after where I had enough and started to miss a turn on the front but soon got back into the rotation. I pulled right into the bottom of another small hill and near my limit Dustin attacked with Andrew and Lorenzo in tow, I slowly started losing ground meter by meter and knew I had no hope of getting back on solo. I soon sat up and waited for the remainder of the pack to catch me and as soon as they did started to get all the guys to work together. I often took double pulls as some guys had a hard time keeping things smooth on the inclines which would be enough to open small gaps which I would fill as I knew keeping this train working smoothly was the only hope we had of reeling anyone back in. At this point there were 6 guys up the road and only a handful of laps remained.
With 1 lap to go we managed to reel back 4 guys in the break
leaving Dustin and Andrew to fight it out for the win, I was pretty certain
even if we had the entire group working together with the gap they had we
weren’t going to close it down, it was now a race for 3rd.
I attacked going up the climb past the golf course and that
failed, we were still mostly together and after the corner I got up and
attacked again this time getting a decent gap, but looking over my shoulder I
seen the group starting to reel me back but I could tell the guys were looking
pretty tired and didn’t look like there was a whole lot of fight left, I went
back and recovered for a few moments as we had 1 little climb left that would
likely be my last chance to get away
solo. I waited at the bottom of the climb as I really wanted someone to drag me
up ½ before I went and soon enough Lorenzo put in a dig which quickly gained
some ground, but he was on the other side of the road I wasn’t able to get in a
draft but no sooner, Marty his arch nemesis wasn’t going to have any of it and
jumped and I stuck to his wheel, as soon as he started slowing down I attacked
and then caught and passed Lorenzo and very painfully and slowly started
opening a gap which I held to the line just close enough to see Dustin and
Andrew play out their track sprint (You can see a LONG way down the road).
Congrats Andrew, well done. In 4th Marty managed to get the best of
Lorenzo and Jay Grover won the field sprint for 6th.
Overall I still need some more work on my top end, but with
each week I can feel I’m getting faster and it’s good to know I have the
endurance in the legs to push hard all race. I just need to start making some
better decisions on when to burn my matches even if I have a couple boxes,
without any teammates this year it makes it all the more important.
-Jeff
