PRONOTPRO REPORT #9

[o] Erin - from the Provincial Crit in Victoria, I'll admit, I blew my matches this day in all the wrong places.

Post Provincial RR - the Gang is all here

Fernwood, great coffee, great space, great bagels

also they hooked us up with this before the TT, thanks Fernwood

Provincial Crit Winner Sara Bergen. Winner does it right [o] Erin

I've been to a few races since I last posted. We raced on the Border of the US and Canada for our Provincial Championship Road Race, the next weekend we tripped over to Victoria on Vancouver Island for the Robert Cameron Law Cycling Series which also included the Provincial Championship Crit. I'd say as a team we maybe fell a little short of our goals. But at the same time we planned and tried our best to execute what we thought would work. I led Kyle out in the RR in Langley for 2nd place, and in Victoria we succesfully helped him defend the series leader jersey he earned on the first day of racing (in the short, hard Dallas Road TT, I was pleasantly suprised to get 3rd in that one..). So really, we didn't do all that bad. After Victoria, Erin and I were watching Netflix and two things happened. One, is that I cracked a molar on a corn chip. The other is that I finally got a spot to ride Tour de Beauce. 

I spent the next week confirming I would actually be able to ride, having a molar ripped out of my skull and trying to figure out just how the hell I was even going to get to Beauce flightwise (and, Nationals a week later). It was actually a pretty stressful week. Much of that week I was eating semi-solid food with a pretty serious ache in my upper jaw, I wasn't allowed to blow my nose or spit for a week as the perforated nasal cavity filled a hole in. But you know, sometimes it works out, I was luckily able to get a flight on family's aeroplan miles and the team I would guest ride for invited me to hop into the van to save on the return flight (I will be driving Ottawa to Vancouver directly after the National Crit on Wednesday).

post stage one, some salty assed gloves

en route to Beauce, Montreal to Quebec was on a sweet small prop plane

okay, I have a soft spot for St Hubert

Josh suffered like hell to make time cut on Stage 2, he was just 8 mins off

my post stage two. I'm pretty close to naked in this.

#flyingsquirrelacademy

Kyle post (or mid?) Stage 5. He made it a few laps further than me. But he really had a great first couple days in service of the National Team

GUYS

Connor was the only Smart/Savvy to survive the whole race and finish. Grit.

Tour de Frieken Beauce.

Man. This race is way harder than anyone drills into your head. And I literally had someone drilling (okay, okay, they weren't drilling, they cut my molar into pieces, then yanked it out with pliers) into my head one week previous to flying out to this race. But it's hard. Did I say it's hard? It's hard. I think that I'm coming back into form that feels good for Nationals, Superweek and Cascades, but form without the time spent at the speed of UCI stage races isn't always translated right. I think I really understand why people do motorpacing after this. If I look at my files for the races the power isn't anything I'm not capable of, but it's the sustained effort and the sheer speed that you're travelling at that doesn't always equate to 'x' amount of time at 'y' amount of watts going up the local mountains.

But hey, it's also a lot of making myself used to being in the Pro Peleton again. Asserting my position close enough to the front of the race that I'm not caught behind splits because I did end up getting caught behind a split on three stages. Which is a pretty bad track record with five stages (plus TT), the last of which, I wasn't behind the split, I was just straight out dropped. So I know I have some things to work on, some of which isn't just motorpacing. 

But you know. Timing is kinda good. The race acted essentially the same as motorpacing. And if I can get my head on straight for Nationals I should have a good go, the same for Superweek and Cascades I hope. 

I can say as I was riding to survive Beauce, it was humbling on a bunch of levels. Not just from seeing the big names slugging it out in one of the bigger UCI races in North America, but seeing big names that are people I've ridden with, in some cases been on the same team as some guys riding the front of the race. It was also humbling to be accepted as full on equal memeber of Giant Langley/Smart Saavy for the week in Beauce. The guys were washing bikes daily, cheering for the guys surviving, feedzoning and keeping up our spirits as the race ground them into pulp. So thanks guys.