This single stage is arguably one of the toughest races of the year. In 68 miles of racing, we climb about 4500 feet, which averaged out evenly wouldn't be that bad. The kicker is the hills through Princton come one after another with no place to recover, then the KOM shortly after that so the speed stays high before decending like a madman for a couple of minutes, just to do it all over again. Six laps is a bear. A very long angry bear that just woke up after a winter of hibernation with a hangover. The topping on this ice cream sundae is we are allowed to ride to the top of Wachusett Ski Mountain. Thank goodness they let us ride to the top using the "down" road that cars go down, because not going up the steepest road there would be sad.
My plan for the day was to sit in and do as little work as possible. Hopefully I would be at the base of the ski mountain with "fresh" legs and do pretty well on the climb. Well, it's impossible to arrive fresh. That said, I rode very smartly. I was consistently about 20 riders from the front, staying out of trouble and taking on plenty of water, intentionally. The day started out by pouring buckets and it wasn't until three hours later that I noticed it had stopped raining. No clue when it stopped, because if it wasn't falling from the skies, it was being kicked up from the road.
I gave the race everything I had, and when I was 500 meters from the top, I heard the announcer talking about how close the riders were to the leader. Wow, I've never heard that before. Typically on a big climb race like this, the stage winners have received their accolades and started down the hill. This was a good day for me, to cross the line while the leaders were still recovering.
Lots of rest tonight and back to the grind tomorrow for the circuit race.
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