Thursday, June 10, 2010

Mt Hood Cycling Classic














This past week, James Williamson and I competed in the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic, a 6 day stage race in northern Oregon. The prologue was a wet 2 laps around the Portland international speed way, no hills and smooth surface made for a good opener to the race, except maybe for the standing water on the track, and maybe the fact that they ran the majority of the riders in the pitch black.

Stage 1 was a so-called crit! more like an extremely short circuit race, every lap had about a 1.5 km climb, also the road was covered in green moss that was really slick. After a bit of rain earlier in the day, the first few laps where quite dangerous, but still a fun race and a great course in the right conditions.

Stage 2 the first road stage, I think it
was a little harder than some people expected and was really really fast! I had decided to make it even harder on myself by attacking and going into the break for the first bit of the race, good idea! after I had my go I got popped from the group and had to do the majority of the second lap on my own. ended up finishing over 20min down on GC which was not to my worry because I was not really going to have a chance in a climbers race like this one.

Stage 3 The TT stage was fun and scenic, but as far as the race went not the best for me, also didn't have a TT bike.

Stage 4 Mt Hood RR anticipated to be the toughest day of the tour, so my goal today was to survive as long as possible, I successfully did this feat until just before the bottom of the last climb on the day. The climb was the last 20k of the stage, boy that was fun I tried to climb my pace and finish with a respectable ride, which I was successful and was able to move on to the next and final stage.














Stage 5 it had been raining all day outside of our host house in hood river which only could add up to a rainy crit. The course had
some scary parts to it but was good over all and with the exception of the Portland International Speedway, followed the trend of the rest of the tour, climbing lots of climbing. All in all it was soon over and I had finished this hard tour, happy with my performance.


















We have already booked our tickets for the Tour of the Dairyland in Wisconsin, we will be leaving the Reno International Airport on tuesday and the next few weeks will be doing some good rest and prep for the 10 days of racing ahead. Fun times ahead!