Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Gila Race Report


    I just wrapped up the Tour of the Gila in Silver City, NM and am in the team van driving back to St. Louis.  The race was a bit tough for us with it being at altitude and having some climbs reach well over 7,000ft above sea level.  As a team we raced pretty well.  We put a guy in the break every day with Isaiah having a great riding grabbing 3rd on stage 2 during the five day race.  
    In the 26.2km time trial Mac grabbed 4th, I was 10th and Isaiah was 12th.  This left Isaiah sitting in 8th place overall.  The crit for us was Isaiahs chance to sit in and save energy for the last day.  The last day is one of the most demanding courses I have raced.  It was just over 100 miles with about 9,000ft of climbing.  The plan of the day was to have either Mac or I in a break away hoping that Isaiah could make  his move and between us we could do as much to help him on the climbs as possible.   From km0 I attacked but didn’t get away Mac countered my move and was joined by 4 others and they were gone and quickly got a big gap getting up to about 8 minutes on the field.  Coming into the last 50km Isaiah got off the front with two other riders in  pursuit of the small group in front of him containing the other GC contenders.   Unfortunately Isaiah never reached them and ended up dropping down to 12th on GC, which is still a very respectable ride for him being at altitude, and with it being our 9th day of racing in 11 days.  I hope to come back next year with some altitude preparation and hopefully a few more strong riders on the team.

For now I am enjoying another long drive across the country and looking forward to a bit of a rest with my racing resuming on Saturday night at the Tour De Grove in St. Louis.


Thanks for reading
  Willy

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