Weekend Racing Report - September 2-5, 2005

Green Mountain Stage Race, Mad River Valley, Vermont

First, if anyone is interested in the full details of this race, check out - www.gmsr.info

I ventured off to Vermont over Labor Day weekend for the 5th annual Green Mountain Stage Race, so here is a report on how it went.

I've been looking forward to this race for a long time. When I picked up my registration packet, I got sort of nervous, but sort of excited too. There were going to be some very good riders there it looked like, including David Veiloux (2005 Tour de l'Abitibi winner), Mark Hinnen (best first year rider at l'Abitibi), 4 Hot Tubes riders including Alex Boyd who was on the US junior world championship team last year, and some other strong teams such as espoirs laval, coast to coast, Ontario, America's cycling team and some other strong Canadian team wearing pink and black, with matching Louis Garneau bikes.

All together, there were 59 junior riders. The first day was the mass start hill climb prologue. It started out with a neutral roll out, then it was probably 4 miles of mostly flat and false flats, finished by a hard and steep 2-3 mile climb that I think goes up like 1700 feet or something like that. It started off well enough, no one was especially eager to start picking up the pace, so we rode most of the first flat part at around 16 mph. When the pack saw the start of the climb, the attacks started going. My plan was to stay at the front for as long as I could, but try and ride as conservatively as possible to hopefully not fall too far behind the leaders. It actually went pretty well for me. People would just surge the pace a little faster and faster, and more and more people would fall off the pace. I was feeling pretty good and found myself in the front 7 riders. With about a kilometer to go, David Veiloux attacked. Alex Boyd tried to get on his wheel but I don't think he made it. I tried to latch on but I couldn't keep up either. I distanced myself from the few other riders I was with though, so I kept pushing to hopefully get 3rd place on the day. I made it, but just barely with 4th place ending up just 1 second behind me. There was a podium for the top 3 each day but I missed it unfortunately. The race bible had said that there would be a podium each day except for the prologue. So I started riding down the mountain before someone mentioned they had been calling me.

The start of the Prologue

Looking down towards the prologue start, 1700ft below, from the top of Appalachian Gap

The next day, Stage 1, was a 35 mile circuit race, with just a little bit of climbing. It was my least favorite of the stages. We only had 1 lane and no shoulder, so people were crammed up and doing some dumb things trying to move up. It showed with two nasty crashes happening less than 2 miles from the finish line. It was a very fast race however. Mike Wickman from America's Cycling Team broke away solo for the last 10 kilometers to win by 8 seconds. I was in awe of how he could do that. I was hurting, but I made my way towards the front part of the group and I ended up 14th on the day, and moved down to 4th overall.

The start of the stage 1 circuit race

The pack rolls through!

Next day, Stage 2, was a 64 mile point to point road race with 2 big climbs and then finishing on the backside of the prologue mountain, with the last 500 meters supposedly having grades as steep as 20%. I wish I had had something smaller than a 39 x 27 for this climb. The race started normally enough. Fast at the beginning, a break finally getting away (which included William Goodfellow who was right behind me on the GC at the time), and then slowing down a bit. At mile 25 about a mile before the feed zone, and 2 miles before the first of the big climbs, the attacks started coming again. "Oh well" I thought, "let them tire themselves out before the climb." That is when I got a flat tire. By the time I was back on my way, the pack was gone. You can't even draft the support cars here to get back on either. I kept going and eventually caught some other riders who were either dropped or had had problems happen to them. Most of the way back was fairly leisurely. One rider even stopped at a gas station and picked up a 2 liter of coke and a cucumber (I don't know why). When we got to the final climb, I didn't want to go too slow, so I tried to ride a hard pace for me. Not like I had much of a choice on this climb though. I ended up 37th on the day, waaayyyy down on the winner, which moved me down to 22nd overall. William Goodfellow was able to stay away and won the day and moved into the leader's jersey.

The last day, Stage 3, was a crit in downtown Burlington, Vermont. I remembered from last year that it is an extremely hard race. It is fairly technical as well, with 6 corners, bricks on much of the course, and an uphill finish. On the very first lap half of the riders were dropped. By the end, the race officals had pulled every one except for the front 21 riders. I had to work extremely hard making sure I wouldn't get popped off the back, and also to make sure I wouldn't get stuck behind a rider who was getting dropped off. It was easily the fastest crit I've done. By the last lap I had moved up to almost half way in the group, and finished 12th. I was very happy with the result.

The INSANE start of the Stage 3, downtown Burlington Criterium

Derek holding on to the leaders through turn 1

The winner of the crit was again, David Veiloux. With the bonuses, he went back into the leader's jersey to win the overall junior GMSR. I ended up in 15th overall. I was pretty happy with it, especially with how the road race went for me. It was a ton of fun and I hope to go back next year. I'd recommend this race to any other riders looking for a good challenge and a good race.

I'm going to try to add a couple of pictures.

Derek