Cascade Cycling Classics

This past weekend I got to play with the big guns at the Cascade Cycling Classics in Bend, Or. We drove in on Monday last week from the east and got our first surprise when we crossed the border into Oregon from Idaho: everyone was expecting lush green forests and mountains but instead we got high desert and flats. No trees whatsoever… Next surprise was when we stopped for gas: in Oregon you are not allowed to pump your own gas, so there is someone there to do it for you. Very weird. Anyways, we made it to Bend and, fortunately, 10 miles before we hit the city the forests started and Bend turned out to be absolutely gorgeous. We stayed at a great host family that took exceptional care of all our needs and made sure we didn’t lack anything.

On Wednesday the Race finally started for me and it definitely exciting riding next to Levi, Chris Horner, Botero or Tom Danielson who were all in the race. The first two stages were both road stages with a mountaintop finish. I’ll spare you the details but I felt good on the first day but, as always, I flatted just before the KOM halfway through the stage and found myself chasing like crazy for the next hour to get back on. At the end I managed to get back into the field and finished 33^rd. On Friday I didn’t feel too good and made a stupid mistake at the bottom of the final climb (I was sitting way to far in the back when the climb started) which resulted in me ending up behind the split. So I came in somewhere around 50^th place on that day. On Friday there was a time trail in the morning and a crit in the evening. The tt was very painful and I got a package by Levi, who put about 4 minutes on me. With a length of about 24 k, that comes down to me loosing 10 seconds every kilometer… autsch! The crit went pretty well, I avoided all the crashes and finished safely in the pack. There were tons of people out to watch, so the atmosphere was great.

On Saturday we had another road stage with a mountaintop finish. I was pretty tired by that time but wanted to make sure to hit the final climb in a better position than on Thursday. I did a decent job at that until the teams started to put their leaders into position. I was sitting top 20 all the way before that but once the trains started forming I got swarmed big time. So I ended up in the second group again… It was a hard day. On Sunday the race finished up with a hilly circuit race. A break went just at the start of the second lap. I only realized that something was up the road at the bottom of the first climb but managed to bridge up to it on that climb. We worked well together for the next three laps but it started to get unorganized with one lap to go and so we got caught with just 5 k to go, just at the foot of the last, steep climb. Bummer! I was pretty toasted at this point and couldn’t stay with the leaders but I guess that was all right. There are Articles on Velonews and Cyclingnews covering this stage if someone wants more detail on it ;-)

It was quite funny as I started out 33^rd in GC after the first stage, dropped down a bit during the race but managed to finish in 33^rd at the end of the five days. More results can be found on the Cascade Cycling Classics home page.

Today we are already down in Sacramento, on step closer to LA. I had originally planned to go to Boise, Id but that fell through at the last moment. Not too happy about that. It would have been nice to do another high caliber race (Boise is part of the US Crit series) and also try to get a good overall result in the Series but instead I’ll have to settle for some regional racing here in California… Anyways, I’ll get over it. Hopefully, I’ll get over my cold by the next race, too. Will has been coughing for the last two weeks and I guess he finally got to me. But enough rest and sleep should do the trick and I should be good to go by next weekend.