La Classique Montreal-Quebec has come and gone (for the 60th year). I raced with 3 other teammates - Chris "Breakaway" Worden, Colin "Jabberwalkie" Jaskiewicz, and William "WD-40" Dugan (all 21) - and we did pretty darn well. Its a long race - 240km this year.
Last years race was 252km and it took about 5:12. This years course was slightly shorter at 240km and the race took about 5:50. Last year had a cross-tail wind and this year had a slight head wind. Tactics were pretty simple last year. Ride in a big 20 man break all day long and then go like crazy when the attacks start 40km from Quebec. I finished 8th. Amos road great in the break all day last year - but came apart a little at the end.
This year, Chris hit it hard at 10km and pulled 3 other riders off the front with him. They got pretty well up the road and Chris rode awesome. At 106km there is a pretty prestigious midway sprint competition ($250). We heard over the race radio that Chris had won the sprint. That put Colin, Will, and I in a pretty good mood for the 2nd half of the race. Chris' move had 8 more guys bridge up to it - and then eventually the race came back together at about 160km. That's when things got tricky. The race was much more complicated this year - attacks coming and going - teams pulling this back - new moves going - people bridging up. The challenging thing is trying to figure out how different teams are racing and how much people have left once we get over 200km.
I eventually went for it full gas with about 50km to go and was in the action from that point on. Will Dugan had already done the same and was up the road - but had an ill-timed flat and was caught out on the late race excitement he certainly would have been a part of. I bridged up to each group that was ahead of me on the road. Its hard to exactly describe the final 5km of the race as there was a lot stuff coming and going - lots of ins and outs. I had strong legs, but not a lot of quickness left. I finished 4th - just missing the podium, continuing the trend of being very good but not truly great. I hope to turn that around before the year is over. I think I raced a little under confident in the last 10km of the race. Its hard to figure out how tired other people are.
Colin came through in 9th place - he was following my wake up the road behind me catching all the groups on the road. Very impressive for a young guy who can sprint so well to ride that way in the last 15km of a 240km race. Will Dugan rode hard all the way to the line - but had understandably gotten a bit frustrated by the bad-luck out on the road. He will dominate this race one day! Chris Worden continued to impress everybody by riding in only a few minutes back on the win - super impressive after such aggressive early riding.
We had tremendous support out on the roads from Joe (WD-40's mentor) and Chris Worden's very nice parents (who are great feeders).
On an interesting side note - I used two things I'd never used before in this race that both helped a fair amount. We used race radios and it definitely helped me from "spacing out" while riding. I have a pretty bad tendency to just zone out during races and I found having Joe giving us race updates from the team car helped me keep my head in the game. The second thing I'd never used before was chamois cream. Its basically a cream that you rub into the pad that in is the bike shorts that reduces friction (a good thing for long days in the saddle). My ass still hurt at the end of the day, but definitely a ton less than last year!
Anyways, its an interesting race that is very well run and it was fun to do.
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