The 2011 Green Mountain Stage Race
We New Yorkers expected to get hammered by high winds and high tides when Hurricane Irene arrived on August 27th, and the mayor had all the hatches battened down. In the end, though, we dodged a bullet, while two mountain ranges we love bore the brunt of the storm. Main Streets in New York’s Catskills and the Vermont’s Green Mountains became rivers. Bridges, houses and roads collapsed and floated away.
We weren’t sure going to Vermont for a bicycle race so soon after this disaster was such a good idea. Maybe going up with a shovel, chainsaw, and a car full of non-perishables was a better plan. No one could be sure the power was on at the house we’d rented. And we weren’t sure we could get there to begin with. What with all the reported road closures, the Warren/Waitsfield area looked as though it might have become an island.
And those closed roads were the very ones on which we were supposed to race for four days. Was it even going to be possible?
On Tuesday night the email went out: The race was ON. Any promoter, of course, would hate to mail back all those entry fees. So we had to ask ourselves: Can they do this safely? Can they possibly get enough volunteers? What kind of condition will the roads be in? Won’t it seem frivolous and insulting for all of us racers to show up in a place where people are struggling to put their lives back together?
Add to these questions a creeping end-of-season indifference to bike races, a very nice family that you hate to leave behind, a six hour drive, and you have a real ambivalence towards leaving NYC on Labor Day Weekend.
We were supposed to go up Wednesday. Around 4pm- too late to go up- word arrived that the area the house is in did not lose power. Not a definitive “Power On”, but close enough to force a decision. I went for a ride in Central Park with Ira, and somehow 60/40, or 40/60- whichever it was- turned into %100 “Go”. Back at home I prepared to mobilize- loading up the Subaru for a stage race always feels like some sort of military scale operation.
I brought to the disaster scene my own personal disasters, as it turns out. The power was on at the house, everything was in perfect order, in fact. But in Friday’s Time Trial, an old bugaboo in the form of a dropped chain immediately put me at the back of the pack. I have a K-Edge mounted on the bike, which is meant to protect against that sort of thing. But it dropped underneath the K-Edge, and when that happens you are fucked. Like 90 seconds fucked, in this case. This was to be my first proper Cat 3 race, and I expected to be riding for a teammate. The dropped chain, at the beginning of the course, pretty much sealed the deal.
Warren (my teammate, not the town of) had a smaller disaster in missing his start time by a few seconds. He’d been telling a race official- the one who was supposed to call him to the start- about getting run off the road- hit, in fact- by a car during his warmup ride. Warren had been wearing headphones, and didn’t hear the tinny, broken horn of the car behind him. Long-story-short, the irate driver told him this was an emergency, he was in a hurry, and that we bike racers “shouldn’t even be here”. They’d nearly come to blows. 6′-3″ Tommy Fad from Texas, a friend we’d met in Italy, had stopped nearby. He might have been the force that prevented the altercation from getting more physical.
Warren seemed extra freaked out that the driver bore a striking resemblance to Alan Atwood. (Alan Atwood? Mother#@¢<£&!)
After the TT, coasting down the hill, completely spent, a Harley flew by Warren. Its rider was flipping the bird and screaming “Go home!”.
The circuit race was the following day. Historically this is my least favorite of the four GMSR stages, but that’s because I’ve found it a bit boring. Not so this time: My rear tubular blew out at around 49 MPH, going down Baby Gap on lap 1, and found myself skittering all over the oncoming traffic lane as I brought Killer (my faithful Cervelo) to a stop. The SRAM boys showed up in no time, considering I’d seen them stopped just up the road with another lucky fellow. A guy I never even looked at threw on a new Campy-rigged wheel (Thanks!) and I was off again, with a push (Thanks!). (I do like Cat 3 neutral support, if not this particular stage.)
I wasn’t sure I had any future in the stage race at that point, but I managed to catch back on 10 or 15 miles later, working with a changing and rotating cast of other riders who had either flatted or fallen off the back. I was grateful then for the field’s pokey pace between the sprint and the lap 2 feed zone. Finishing alone would have added insult to injury, and left me wishing I had just packed it in post-blow-out.
Finishing with the pack was no picnic, though. I remember seeing the 3′s finish this stage when I was a 5. I can picture, in freeze-frame, some guy who’d been sprinting for 15th place, maybe. I see him upside down, in mid-air. I remember a Quebecois rider carrying his frame over the finish line in two pieces, spewing invective. The pack at the end our race, back in the present tense, was fast, tight, and twitchy. I thought about what it would be like to go down then. Ugly.
But this is bike racing. I stayed as close to the front as I could, ears open for the first tell-tale sounds of an ensuing pileup.
The moto nearly brought us down shortly thereafter, ironically enough, neutralizing us because of a crash 7k up the road, at the finish line. 2 or three times the group nearly went down this way. Position was everything here, and being neutralized so close to the end did not prevent some jockeying for better spots.
A real crash happened a few K from the finish. That same twitchiness in the field was the culprit, I suspect, though I was looking for clear road at that moment, and not the cause of the mess. I heard yelling before anyone went down. I slowed, despite the loaner wheel being too thin to engage my rear brake, and then steered around what in recollection looked like a growing, rolling mound of sod. The yellow Jersey went down there. So did Warren, at the tail end. He got up right away, threw a bike off of his, got back on, and rode to the finish.
I heard the second crash, too, just before riders went down, maybe 1k after the first. I narrowly missed a fallen rider’s cracked carbon wheel, it’s tire spitting air and sealant, having been run over by the rider just in front of me. Sliding sounds, and swearing, drifted off behind as those of us left upright hammered towards the line.
In the end most of us were given the same time.
My fortune continued in more or less the same way the next day. We went to the wrong staging area, at first, for the road race. I couldn’t find the space-food-powder I like to add to my water for added courage. I got too short a warm-up, went to the wheel van, went back to the car for forgotten gels, and forgot my third bottle there.The attacks began as soon as the neutral start ended, and bottle numero uno was dropped taking a first swallow. That left me with one bottle, filled with just water. The day was hot. I knew I was toast.
There were notes of encouragement. As we rode through Waitsfield, past the now closed- washed out- covered bridge we rode over on this stage the previous year, crowds of people outside the Mad River Valley Food Volunteer HQ were yelling “Thank you for coming!”. I might have heard one “Go home”. Not sure. But most locals seemed to appreciate our being there. Indeed, they thrive on tourist dollars, as was pointed out in a local paper’s editorial that weekend. We were doing our best to spend some cash there.
Back in the race, I covered attacks for a while, riding for teammate Dan, as was the plan. (Dan was in 8th overall). One of these break attempts got me to the feed zone before the pack. I held out my open hand and cried out desperately for neutral water, but got only apologies, blank stares, or completely ignored. I believe a break got away then, and I began to struggle to hang on at the back of the pack as they accelerated in pursuit. Only because they slowed again did I begin to feel like I might make it at least to the base of Baby Gap (in the other, uphill, direction this time) with the bunch. I knew it would be a struggle after that.
That’s when Dan’s hand went up. He was calling to me, too. I got off to give him my wheel, but a Campy vs. Shimano divide occurred us both at about the same time. I told him to take my bike. I insisted. He did. The wheel truck (no fancy SRAM Volvos for us today) pulled up. Holding Dan’s bike in one hand, its rear wheel in the other, I arranged to get in. I began to relax. The driver looked up the road and said “your buddy’s coming back”. I looked around and saw Dan, riding the wrong way on the race course.
The Time vs. Whatever-Pedals-Dan-Rides divide had not occurred to us. Dan got a wheel. I got my bike back. I dug for an effort I did not know I had left in me, doing what I could to tow Dan at least some of the way back to the pack. When I looked back, Dan was way off, looking down at his new wheel. Then he was talking to the wheel truck’s driver. Then they were both flying past me.
My ride having fallen through, I looked around for options. I did my best to trade Killer for one of these, but the deal went south at the last moment: 
I resigned myself to my two-wheeled fate, and settled in for a nice ride in the country, sans internal combustion (though maybe a little internal melting).
I always forget at times like this that there may be riders further back. Maybe I thought this would not be the case in Cat 3. But I was a little surprised when a little group picked me up. Now I had another first in this race, along with my first tubular blow-out, and first neutral-support wheel: I was riding in my first grupetto. I mean, I’ve been in chase groups before, but there was no chase in this group. At least not in my mind. I wasn’t even concerned about a time cut. I just wanted to get back to the car. And I wanted some water.
We got it, in the form of rain. With a killer headwind. Then we split up, each of us riding his own pace up Baby Gap, and then App Gap. I could only smile at the end to the sounds of cheering; the “you’re doing great”s. Great for 75th place!
I’d passed Dan at the bottom of App Gap. That wheel he’d got turned out to be another rider’s cast off wheel. It barely functioned. Dan had to walk up the last, steepest bit of App Gap.
We sat outside at American Flatbread that night, but we had to beg them to serve us there. A rain storm was on their radar. Just what they needed after being under 3 feet of water the previous weekend! Rain was forecast for the next day’s criterium in Burlington, too. I had an extra beer. Maybe it was two extra. We had already decided to head home. I’ve loved the crit in the past- but with a fighting chance at top ten GC. And on dry roads.
The following day, Ira and I were halfway to NYC, traveling south on I-87, when the text came from Warren, traveling south on I-91: “Crit was cancelled. So we didn’t bail after all!”. That left Ira, who rode without teammates, in 18th in the GC; the highest placed CRCA rider in our field. I congratulated him. We ate cookies.
I never looked at my own GC.
