April 7/14 20:54 pm - Tour of the Battenkill, report and results

Posted by Editoress on 04/7/14
 

Battenkill is the hardest race I’ve ever done. Period.

Everything about Battenkill was hard. To start Chris Bozek, Barbie Hope and I were late leaving Toronto and didn’t get to our hotel until 1am. After 5 hours sleep we made our way to the race course.

Battenkill was my first Cat2 race and it was a welcome sight to see a few other Canadians including Anthony Steblowski and Luke Vanlauwe on the start line.  Anthony and I were able to have quick discussion and he gave me some great advice: don’t attack until the end. Of course, this is advice I didn’t follow.

Once out on the roads, the fight for position was constant and I found myself continuously yo-yoing from the front to the back. Rain the night before had changed the dirt roads to the constancy of peanut butter which had the peloton strung out immediately. The course was constantly rolling and, on one steep muddy hill, the pace from struggling riders became so slow the much of the peloton was forced to dismount, with many riders running their bikes up the hill. My cyclocross re-mounting skills saved me on that one.

At about 30km into the race breakaway of three, which included two teammates, got away. I don’t know what it is about breakaways - I can’t resist. I jumped, even though I knew I shouldn’t. I bridged to the break. And we were away for close to 60km.

Everyone in the break was Canadian and we were able to work extremely well together. At one point, the support vehicle pulled up and informed us that we had a 5 minute lead on the peloton. We looked around at each other and laughed with joy. We were going to win this race! I could already picture Barbie standing at the line seeing me finish in the lead. But, as my old boss used to say when I worked in politics: “pride comes before the fall”.

Things were going well until about 80km into the race. I made a crucial mistake before the race and didn’t set my bike computer to display the elapsed distance. And, I was too worried about showing weakness to my fellow escapees to ask them how far we had to go. Punching up the constant climbs and the effort of pushing through spongy dirt roads was starting to weigh on me.

I kept telling myself that the finish should be around any corner. And then, all of sudden, I could hear cheering. We were close I knew it! We turned the corner onto feedzone one. We were only at the first of two feedzones! At that point I knew I was already pretty much cooked and I could tell the others were getting there too.

On the next series of climbs our breakaway lost a rider. The support vehicle informed us that our gap was down to one minute and thirty seconds. We lost another rider. Then the leader lost me.

I was caught by the peloton and again pride was my downfall. Rather than finding the most sheltered spot in the group, I wanted to show I wasn’t down and out; I tried to stick it out in the first ten riders. This worked until the first hill. I was dropped like a stone. The true cost of the breakaway came to bear. I never saw the lead group again and was on my own with 20km of muddy road and steep climbs still to come.

I had failed to recognize that Battenkill is a war of attrition. I had put all my cards on the table and lost.

In my head, when I launched for the break, I had visions of riding away from the field to victory like Bruce Bird so often does.  It was at that point that someone called my name. And who was it? It was Bruce, who had broken away from his own race, which had started later than ours. Without a sign of pain in his face he said “hi”, smiled and soloed on to victory.

As luck would have it, I ended up riding with another dropped rider from Toronto, Scott Fitzgerald who described my breakaway attempt as a “kamikaze move”. We suffered on together until eventually Scott dropped me as well.

I’ve never been so desperate for a race to be over. I ate everything I had and tried to push on to the finish. I came across the line physically destroyed. I immediately went to sleep in the back of the car and then drove back to Toronto with Chris and Barbie (both of whom had strong races in their categories) so that I could race the Tour of Bronte the next day.

I’ll be back a Battenkill for sure. But next time I’m going to be smart.

Report by Grahame Rivers

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