Yikes, today was the mother of all stages. 77 miles, 5600 feet of climbing in just about 3 hours, 3o minutes. I am totally stoked with my ride! From the start of racing I attacked. Having learned from my previous mistakes, I upped the speed at a reasonable pace and hoped that a couple of people would follow, four did. After a couple of minutes we established a decent gap, which turned into 30 seconds, then we disappeared around a corner and it was game on. 18 miles from the start of the break we had swept up the sprint points and stayed away for nearly an hour before the pack caught back up. The bane of most climbs was removed from the race this year due to major storms, replaced with a climb of 8 miles and 1500 feet. Over the top of the climb I was still with the pack and feeling good. We cruised through some of the most scenic parts of Vermont that I have ever ridden through. I bet without a state police escort the motorists aren't so kind though.
I've raced App Gap five times now, recon'd the climb another dozen times, and this was the first time that I had a problem keeping track of things. The final 20k clicked by so fast, that I found myself thinking multiple times "We're here already?" With 2.5k to go, I finally had enough and was popped from the pack, but stayed close. My loss was limited to just about three minutes. The largest accomplishment of the day though was to watch the podium ceremony. I've never seen the podium ceremony for the cat 3's on App Gap. It wasn't that cool, but I'm pretty stoked to be able to have seen it and make that call.
Crit and final stage tomorrow!
Oh, final place on the day, 42nd. 34th GC!
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