After the torturous first stage of the GP Cycliste de Saguenay, the team went back to the hotel and showered before dinner. My roommate, Justin, had been racing far longer than I. This was my first UCI race ever, and I got the impression that this wasn’t even his first of the year. A seasoned and experienced racer is typically very organised. Justin was no exception, with an immaculate suitcase and race-day bag. This was in contrast to the pile of clothes spilling over the sides of my bag. I learned pretty quick that more organization equals less stress overall. In my experience, teams like to be punctual. If the director says that the van is leaving for the race at 9, it pulls out at 9. You better be there or you’ll be riding your way to the start line. It seems to me that there’s always “that one”, the one person who is almost always just a few minutes late. Most teams won’t actually leave a rider behind, but I’ve heard of a few who do. The better the organization and setup of the team, the lower the stress for everyone involved. And if there’s less stress, everyone races better. Luckily, this is not foreshadowing for the second stage of Saguenay. On the whole, Ride with Rendall was exceptionally well organized. You just never want to be the person that’s always late. Anyways, back to the exciting stuff. We rolled up to the start of stage 2. The start and finish were just a small distance from the previous day. The course rolled uphill for the first half, before a hairy crosswind section. A left turn then took the peloton onto a smooth section of road with a strong tailwind followed by a short descent down to the finish. We did 9 laps of that course, totalling about 170 km. The race started and my only goal was to make it as far as possible without getting dropped. Turns out that was going to be pretty hard. The first half of the course was relatively easy. Even with the hills it all seemed pretty chill. Maybe I had just recovered really well? That thought vanished as soon as we turned left into the crosswind section. All of a sudden everyone was in a world of hurt. The pro teams hit the front of the group and wound up the pace. In a crosswind, the group forms what is called an echelon. Essentially, the best draft is slightly to the side of the person ahead of you, so the group lines up with a certain number of people across the road. Since there is a finite amount of room, anyone not in a position to be beside someone else and in this optimal draft has to work very hard just to keep in contact. This can be even worse if the person at the front doesn’t use the whole width of the road. I wasn’t near the front so I had to fight just to hold the wheel in front of me. I learned a lot of lessons in just a few kilometers that day. I got dropped with 2 laps to go when I just couldn’t hold the wheel in front of me anymore. I was cooked from 2 days of hard racing. I didn’t want to let my team down and I wasn’t ready to be done just yet. I rode the last 2 laps mostly solo, occasionally with a few other stragglers. Once dropped, the goal is always to make it in within the time cut. Race organisers set a time cut, which is usually a percentage of the winner’s time added onto their stage time. If you finish outside the time cut, you get a DNF. I made it in time that day. Not quite last but a fair ways back. There were a few nasty crashes that day, but luckily no one from Ride with Rendall was hurt. We crawled back to the hotel, showered and went to dinner. We were in bed by about 8, ready for a long sleep before the next day’s criterium. All in all, Stage 2 of the GP Cycliste was a learning day. No results or efforts to write home about, but I know I’ll never make the same mistakes again. I really felt as if I was thrown into the deep end. That day taught me how to keep myself afloat. Photo: Tim O'Connor
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After a less than stellar year in 2016, I knew I was lucky to be on a team like Ride with Rendall. I could have very well been riding for a local team, doing local races. A huge part of my motivation last year was knowing that I was taking a forward leap, into a whole new world of bike racing. To an outside observer, this might all seem very trivial. A bike race is just a bike race, right? Put simply, no. There are many different levels to bike racing. With Ride with Rendall, I had the opportunity to ride some of the top races in North America. These races belong to a circuit known as the UCI America Tour. It’s a group of UCI races, mostly attended by professional teams, with a few elite amateur teams mixed in. My first crack at one of these races was at the GP Cycliste de Saguenay. It has a reputation for bad weather, tough and punchy courses, and a lot of DNF’s. When the team rolled into Saguenay, I could tell it would be a far cry from the limited race days I had back home. The first day there consisted of a team presentation, where each team lines up for a photo op and the riders are presented. This all felt very foreign to me, and it was intimidating sitting across the room from athletes I had watched on TV for years. I think some small part of me thought that maybe I would do incredible things at a big race and easily secure a pro contract. That feeling was far outweighed by my logical thoughts that told me that I had no chance; I knew that I would be lucky to finish the 4-day stage race. The first stage was on a hilly circuit just outside of Saguenay. It was a single steep pitch every lap followed by a long, false-flat section, and a descent back down into town. We signed on as a team, stood for a picture, and had a team meeting before the stage. I was very glad to be under the direction of Glen Rendall and Jason Cheney, they have infinitely more experience than me. I knew they had no expectations for me, and that was comforting, I could just do my best and that’s all I could hope for. The stage started and within a few laps I was in the gutter, barely hanging on. Each time up the wall nearly had me dropped, and the false-flat section took every ounce of energy I had. The speed was unrelenting, as the break of the day tried to establish. Unbeknownst to me, the breakaway that sticks on the first day of a short stage race like this almost always contains the eventual winner. Naturally, all the teams want to be in this break, so speeds can be through the roof before a select group gets away. What was I doing while this was happening? Hanging on for dear life on the tail end of the group. I finished that day in dead last. My teammates had ridden an awesome race, each finishing with the pack. At first, the results said that I had missed the time cut and I was given a DNF. Eventually the results were revised and I was given the “lanterne rouge” position. I was just happy to live to fight another day. Sign-on before Stage 1. Photo: Tim O'Connor
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Christian GomesI'm a bike racer Archives
February 2018
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