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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Christian GomesI'm a bike racer Archives
February 2018
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