Tour of the Battenkill Race Report – Part 1

This past Sunday (April 10th) was the 8th annual Tour of the Battenkill.  As I detailed in my last post, America's Queen of the classics had me running a little scared, but I had prepared as best I could, seeing as how I was a late entry via the wait list.  Luckly, the bike racing gods smiled upon us and we had a beautiful day for a 64 mile race of dirt and tarmac.  Half a world away, Johan Van Summeren was winning the true King of the Classics, so let's see how it went for an amateur in his second race of the season:

Cambridge or Bust

The alarm clock (or more correctly the iPhone) pealed it's rueful tone at 6 am, rousing the troops for the day ahead.  I had the excellent support of my wife and her family (whose photos can be found right here) and everyone was cheerful and excited, despite the hour (and despite my lack of coffee.)  Good old Mr. Coffee was fired up, bagels and eggs were consumed, bottles were packed, my bike was loaded and we were off.  The uneventful and rather speedy drive to Cambridge was a good thing: no good comes of stressing out over getting to a race just to ride the race.  We arrived and parked next to the starting/staging area amid a mass throng of racers and their support crews.  I figured, so far so good.  I headed to registration while everyone else started to pull essentials out of the car and get things ready.

Sign and ride

I think one of my favorite things about Battenkill was the level of organization present among the volunteers and staff.  Registration was a breeze: find my category location, hand over my license, take race number and timing chip, sign and head off to get ready.  Oh, and stop to pick up complementary Clif Shots while you're at it.  Little did I ever think how much people might need those.

I headed back to the car through the masses of cyclists and spectators to the car where everyone was waiting.  Seeing the quality of competition, I was a bit nervous, but I kept reminding myself that this wasn't a season goal, but a chance to experience the highest level of bike racing and to enjoy myself.  Continuing to remind myself of those little details, I slithered into my Team Bikeway.com kit and jumped on the trainer to warm up a little bit before the neutral rollout.  I've finally learned to get the timing of my trainer warmups down: spend about 40 minutes on the trainer, get acclimated to the weather conditions while loosening up the legs a bit and listening to some tunes to clear your mind so as to focus on the task at hand.  I knew in a race like this, mental focus and toughness would probably be as important as having good legs for the distance.  Oddly enough, I didn't realize quite how right that would be until the end of the race.  But I digress.

After a good solid warmup, including plenty of harder efforts and a few all out efforts (in a race with as much difficult terrain as Battenkill, it's imperative to get the system working up to the level of the race, otherwise you'll find yourself off the back in no time) I was ready to roll out.  But with about 25 minutes left until the gun, I figured it was the perfect time to stop by the port-o-john and soothe the nervous pre-race bladder.  Since I found no line, I figured it would be prudent to take a couple laps around the local roads to keep my legs warm, get a feel for the road surfaces and for the wind (of which there was plenty of.)  It was also a perfect opportunity to shed any final layers of clothing in anticipation of the warm weather (actually about 71 and sunny) that could possibly cause issues later on.

And they're off!

The gun sounded on the dot at 11AM and we were off like a shot.  The neutral rollout was uneventful, as was the first 3 or so miles of riding (except for two riders tangling elbows and almost going down.)  Once the race turned off of the main highway and onto the rougher back roads, things started to hot up a bit.  Lingering near the middle of the 50 strong pack, someone grabbed their brakes and skidded a bit into the first hard right through the covered bridge.  Not a good way to start a race, if you ask me, so I picked my way up to ride with the first 10 riders in the pack, where it would be safer.  No sooner had we all settled into a nice pace, someone took a solo flier off the front of the group, which was reeled in without a second thought.  By now, the pace was edging up past "brisk" on its way to "blistering" but it didn't deter a few other riders from trying their own moves off the front.

The group stayed together until we hit the second dirt section, the infamous Juniper Swamp road.  Riding in the front 15 I hit the bottom of the climb with a vengeance, but the moment I stood up, my wheel spun and I came to a dead stop, losing all momentum.  I ground out the rest of the climb, turning my 39/27 over at 40 rpm and grunting my way to the top of the dirt wall.  Now, we all know that Garmin units are often a little imprecise with their grade calculations, but the number 28% flashed up on my screen, and I can believe it would be somewhere in that neighborhood.  That was a STEEP climb, and the loose dirt made it something a little more unexpected, even for all the dirt riding I've done around home.

At the top of the climb I was facing a 10 second gap to the group, which I was able to close down with the help of two other riders who were gapped off the back on the Juniper Swamp climb.  I stayed with the group, following wheels until a mile from the first feed when I fell off the back as a half dozen riders hit the gas at the front and created a split.  I burned a lot of energy to catch up, but couldn't get back to the group (at this point about 25 riders.)

Feed me seymour, feed me!

I hit the first feed zone fast, tossed my bottles and took on two fresh ones, prepping my mind for the coming 4o some odd miles of solo riding.  A couple miles from the feed zone I hooked up with a few other dropped riders from my race (as well as the earlier cat 5 race that went off) and we worked together to work our way through Joe Bean road (a relentless climb in its own right) and the descent back down toward the Battenkill creek.  Somewhere along the way up Joe Bean road, I started to get a little twinge of a cramp in my left calf, but I thought nothing of it: I'd put electrolytes in all my bottles and I'd been eating enough thus far, so I shrugged it off as a small cramp from the steep climbing we'd done to this point.  I wish I had just listened to that little insignificant cramp in my calf and done something about it.  It might have stopped the next 35 miles from being absolute "mind over matter" hell…

Part 2 coming soon!

Comments?  Questions?  How did you do on Sunday?  Post up and let me hear from you!