Green Mt. Stage Race - Prologue

8.2 mile Hillclimb

Master 30+
20th/61
20th GC

I arrived in Warren, VT yesterday after a 4.5 hour drive due east. Man, is it ever difficult to go east-west in northern NE! I’m glad I got the drive over with and was able to set up camp. I’m staying at the Powderhound which I picked because it has suites. Hopefully I’m saving money by being able to prepare all my meals rather than eat out. The place has everything I need to cook, except for a stove. I don’t know what I was thinking but I brought a frozen pizza and had no way to cook it. I ended up heating it up on a frying pan, it tasted just as good! I was a little concerned there wasn’t a bathtub as I was planning to take ice baths after each stage. A dip in the pool put to bed those worries, it’s super chilly!
I’m flying solo this weekend as it was too much of a trip to drag the whole family to. I expect to host former KHS ski coach Jack Bailey Saturday night as he’s competing in the Citzen’s race on Sunday. I also met PVC president “Fast” Fred Thomas. He won the 4/5 35+ race last year so I’ll be watching him. He screamed up the hillclimb today so he’s off to a good start.
I was learning new things about the stage race right up until yesterday! The big news was the fact that the prologue today was not a traditional timetrial. It was a hillclimb, thus negating the need for a true TT bike. Also, it was a mass start so all you had to do was take notice of where you are at in the field to determine your position. I thought this was a good thing as you can compete against others rather than the clock. What I learned just yesterday was the entire stage is based on points, not time, so it made sense the prologue was a mass start rather than timed. This means, your daily finish position has a set amount of points awarded to it. Your final GC position is based upon # of points accumulated, finish times mean nothing. Heading into the prologue I thought these revelations were good, we’ll see how it plays out in the end.
Today was perfect riding weather, 70’s and sunny, negligible wind. I had a good warmup and was ready to go. We lined up and rode through Waitsfield in a controlled start. This is supposed to mean the pace car keeps us at a moderate pace so no one can go off out front. The TargetTraining team must have pressured the driver to speed up because we were definitely at race pace from the get-go! Once we turned onto Rt.17 it was on. I hung around the front, even taking a couple of turns pacing at the outset because the steep stuff was yet to come. Once the road went vertical, the true racers emerged.
The route was a total of 8.2 miles, 7.3 after the neutral start, with the last 2.7 of it gaining 1276ft. of elevation at an average of 10% grade. There’s not much to say other than everyone is pretty much going as hard as they can. Drafting no longer is an aid. People are basically redlining it and just accepting their position as the best they can achieve. At least, that was my approach! This climb seemed a lot harder to me than Mt. Washington. It was really only about 2 miles of steeps compared to Mt. Washington’s 7. But I guess you don’t pace yourself to make the distance, you just go harder than you would really prefer to pick up positions to the finish.
My finish was unfortunately not as high as I expected it would be. I came into the weekend with a lot of confidence in my climbing. I was definitely going at my max, 190HR for a portion, and 185avg. My legs felt OK, I just don’t think I could go any harder. Perhaps if I used a harder gear I could have made up some time, but as the finish line loomed, I wasn’t close enough to improve my standing so I just rode it out. My hope is I will pick up positions as the weekend goes on like at Fitchburg. However, as I said, this is a points race and Fitchburg was a time race. So, it may be more difficult to score top stage finishes. My approach from here is to earn top-10 finishes and see how I end up.
Next up is the 53 mile circuit race.