Tour of the Gila

The Tour of the Gila was by far the hardest, yet most awesome, race I have ever done. I've been searching for pictures the past few days, but haven't found any. Perhaps if I ever do the Pro/1 race it'll be a little easier to find a few pics.

Anyway, since its been 2 weeks since the race, I'll just give the synopsis of each stage:

Stage 1: Mogollon RR- 90 some odd miles.
In the weeks running up to the race I asked some other riders in Tucson what to expect from this race. The consensus was, "The suicide break on the first stage has made it the last 2 years and it determines the GC a lot." Alright, I can do that.

We rolled through town on our neutral portion and as soon as we hit mile 0 a Big Ring Cycles kid attacked. We were just ambling a long so I put in a little dig on a rise and bridged up to him. We hit it pretty hard for the next 10 miles and got a gap of about 2 minutes. The refs told us a group of 5 was chasing and the field wasn't doing too much. It was good news since 2 guys couldn't make it to the end for sure. They caught us a few miles later and it was exactly who I thought would be in it. We got a good paceline going and built up a 4-5 minute gap by the feedzone at mile 40. After that was a long, false flat with a solid cross wind for about 30 miles. I cracked at mile 60 or so and drifted back to the field. And a little while later 2 others from the break came back too. At this point the gap was down to a minute but the others were hung on until just before the finishing climb. A group of 5 broke away and bridged up by the start of the final climb, all but one guy from the original break stayed with them...and he won by 2 minutes. I was pretty bummed about getting dropped from that break, but not much I could do about it.

Stage 2: Inner Loop RR- 75 miles.
This race started off like a freaking crit! Guys who did poor the first day were super pissed and the first couple of miles were just endless attacks. Finally on the first sustained climb the race leader set a super fierce tempo and hand the field single file. I hung on for dear life but got popped. A group blew past me a little while later but I couldn't hang with them and I was really regretting the decision to attack from the gun the day before. I rode solo until about mile 30 when 2 other guys caught up with me. We kept up a good pace and started to catch other dropped guys and soon we had 7 with us. We kept the pace high and joked around with a meaningless sprint for 40th about 17 minutes back.

Stage 3: ITT- 16 miles
Scariest thing I've ever done on a bike. The wind was awful- sustained 25-30 mph, gusts up to 50-60. And it was a cross wind for the most part. The first 4 miles were up hill, so it wasn't bad, the rest was pretty fast descents. However, with the wind I was getting almost getting blown off the road and into on coming traffic. The return was just as bad until the final mile where it was a tail wind and you could spin out. A few guys got blown into the barriers at the finish. I still can't understand how guys used a disc wheel in those conditions.

Stage 4: Downtown Crit- 30 laps
A nice, 4 corner crit, with a hill on the backside and a quick descent on the the 3rd straight away. It was a super safe and fun course. I'm still getting over my fear of crashing since I broke my thumb last fall and wasn't enjoying it as much as I should have. Nonetheless it was nice to not have to do something with 8,000+ ft of climbing or with a killer cross wind.

Stage 5: Gila Monsters RR- 105 miles.
Epic in every sense of the term. The course has nearly 9,000 ft of climbing, including riding up to the summit of Emory Pass at 8,500 ft (and then flipping it and railing the descent). The race started off pretty tame, we'd go hard on the rollers and short climbs but it wasn't unbearable and I stayed close to the front. However things got ugly at the base of Emory and I got dropped part of the way up. I rode steady and stayed calm and only lost about a minute by the summit. I was solo for the next 30 miles and eventually got discouraged by the cross/head wind on along the river valley. 2 guys caught me, one who had crashed badly before Emory on a descent, and we started working together. Turns out the guy who was bloody was 8th on the GC. We set a pretty hard pace up the river valley and up the steep penultimate climb, but we still lost a lot of time by the end of the day.

In the end, only 39 of the 57 starters finished...and I was 38th. Not what I was hoping for, but at least not last. Having done this race once taught me a lot and I hope I can do it again in the future.