2009 Blogs
Sunday’s road race began all too early and soon, at the raw time of 7:26 a.m. There is a train that runs from Durango to Silverton, so the object of the day for the citizen riders is to “beat the train." For the women, the object was to cling to Mara’s wheel.
There is always a calm before the storm, so we rolled along the first few miles before the climb began at an easy and quiet pace – either because it was so early, or out of anticipation of knowing we would be climbing out of our skin at 11,000 ft! Sure enough the storm began when Mara went to the front, so I grabbed her wheel knowing that if anyone were to open a gap on her it would all be over. Within a minute of this, the 60-women field was reduced to a front group of Mara, Marissa Asplund, Alicia Welsh, Melissa Mcwirther, Susannah Gordon, Tiffany Cromwell, and myself. The storm had crushed its first victims before ultimately decimating this group of seven. About 25 miles in, I couldn’t match Mara’s final surge, which separated herself from the group. Toasted, I watched Marissa, Alicia, Susannah, and Melissa ride away from me too. Tiff had fallen off, and I found myself all by my lonesome at 9,500 ft.
The road race had turned into a hillclimb time trial for me, so I went through a variety of different mental states, ranging from ‘this sucks! A $50 entry fee for a training ride?!’ to ‘Harden up, you can get yourself top 5 instead of lousy 6th!’ to ‘screw this I’m tired of pedaling’ to ‘OH, she’s right up the road, pedal harder, stronger, faster!’ to lyrics from another song…”There’s no way you’ll march on top of me, not how this is gonna be – it’s not the size of the dog in the fight but the fight in the dog." Ultimately, through all my mind games I pulled myself out of the dredges and even made my arms go numb.
The first pass to get over was Coal Bank pass at 9,600 ft, which shoves you down a wicked descent, dropping you at the looming doom of the second pass – Molas Pass, which tops out at 11,000 ft. From there, you then have the final four miles of a joyous and ripping descent into the finishing town of Silverton. Mara had told me that two years ago she had been in the lead up until the climb ended, only to be rocketed past by a speedy Alison Powers in the final 2k of the 50-mile/2.5 hr race. I took this ticket of information and stuck it in my back pocket.
I was relieved to have made it over Molas Pass. I had tried to eat a Powerbar gel blast while climbing, but apparently only my legs were still functioning, as the first one hardly made it out of my pocket into my hand before being dropped; I missed my mouth with the second one; got the third one in my mouth, only to see it careening back out and onto the pavement with a string of drool. To add to this, I have had problems with my left eye closing at high elevation, so I fought this as the ascent turned into a switch-backing descent. Fortunately with my right eye I was able to see my prey a couple switchbacks ahead. It was Susannah Gordon, a rider from Colorado who can definitely hold her own on a bike uphill, downhill, and all around. But I had my 11x26 on, which was the ultimate gearing, so I could go faster than I should have been going. With 3k to go I blew past Susannah like she was standing still and held onto it for a 5th place finish. In the end I fought through all sorts of mental states and was pleased to see that over a two-and-a-half hour climb I was only four minutes off of Mara who has proved to not suck when the road goes up.