Green Mountain Stage Race: Day 1 -- The Time Trial (report by Max L)

As much as I was looking forward to the beginning of what I call my Super Bowl for the season, I must say I was dreading this TT. The Green Mountain Stage Race is one of the biggest and best stage road races in the country and with prior success at this event, I always have good feelings going in, except for yesterday. Time trials are not my forte yet I recently have been working on it for this event with its' newly designed TT course from last year that I missed. I've put out some good times and not so good times in my practice sessions and the variable for me always seems to be my Asthma....I seem to lock up and over cook sometimes out of the shoot and find it hard to recover. Using last years times as a guide (best was mid 14 minutes), I was shooting for around 15 min or just over to get me in the top 10 to 15 and give me a fight chance for Top 5 or podium in General Classification over the coming days. The course is mainly uphill the first 2 miles with the 2nd mile being much more severe in pitch. I hit this part pretty much under control cresting the 1.5 mile steepest portion in good pace and accelerating over...this is good. There is a false flat for a quarter mile and then another 5-6% pitch which takes you to 2.2miles. This is where the problems began. As I put it in my big chain ring on the false flat, the heart rate began to crest. As I tried to get up this one in the saddle, I began to exceed my threshold. Got to the top, tried to shake out the legs but I couldn't get myself out of the red. Over the next 3 miles which was slightly downhill, I should have been rolling fast and excelerating but never could get over the pedals and drive some serious speed...still in the red! The head wind didn't help to get into a comfort zone either. At the 5 mi mark, there is the "dip"...great! You fly downhill at top speed and quickly hit a wall. I tried to stay tucked for half of the wall and slowly drive out of the saddle trying to stay in the drops and out of the wind. The last 1/2 mi is slightly uphill so you can't burn out on that wall. That was truly like hell I must say and just put my head down and kept looking for the markers spray painted on the ground. The result; 16:31. Bad...very bad. That's what you call laying an egg!! That put me at 39th out of 62 at 1:48 behind the leader. Great job to Ed Angeli (my only other Masters Teammate racing with me this weekend...Badger, here is now where you are mentioned or lack there of. Thanks for the moral boost by coming to stay with us this weekend even while you are not racing but how about helping me "chamy up" or even a chain cleaning?). Ed cam in with a time of 15:53 and in 19th place. We will have our hands full the next couple of days with a loaded field and teams that have numbers. For me, it's about stage wins now and possibly the King of the Mountain jersey. I have fought back in the past from a bad TT (all be it a different course in '06 & '07) to get into the top 10 in GC and this weekend looks the same. Look for daily updates and Ed should be blogging later on the results of the Circuit Race. Or, keep an eye on the race at gmsr.info.