After making it through Quebec city on the way to the race, we passed by all the landmarks we visited back on our Grade 7 trip to Quebec City including Chute Montmorency and the church at Ste-Anne de Beaupre. Shortly after Beaupre the hills really started kicking up and we all started to feel a bit nervous of the race that would await us on Sunday. The TT promised to be flat and the Crit as well, but Sunday would be a real test. We went to town to sign in, got some groceries and went to our chalet to eat and sleep.
Saturday morning we started off with the 16 km Contre-La-Montre. Ruth was first to start with the Elite women and she came in 2:51 back for 17th. Drew and Jeroen came in just before my start coming 25th and 22nd respectively. I had some doubts in my mind on how it would go. I started directly behind Pierrick Naud, I was told he was pretty fast so I would try to keep him in sight for pacing myself. It was really fast heading out with a slight tailwind and I felt like I kept it around 50, but at the turnaround it was a different story with a headwind dropping my speed to mid 30s. Ultimately I came in 22:07, 34th. I am really happy with this because for one, I did not have the full aero equipment and position which I think would have helped a little, and also it was my first TT in Quebec.
I got some lunch in Downtown Baie-St-Paul and watched the Women's race before taking a little nap before my race. I made the mistake of not pinning my second number on my skinsuit before the crit and only realized this at the last minute so I had to go back to the car and ended up starting at the back of the pack. It was a really hard race just to stay on starting from the back as it was very technical, 2 of the corners you had to slow down completely so I just suffered like crazy and couldn't move up at all. I finished in the back of the pack
Sunday arrived and we didn't have a whole lot of time to sleep since my crit was at 7:30 the evening before, and we were to race at 9am in the morning. We made it with a little time to spare and the pack was huge combining Sr 1,2,3 and Juniors all together. The pace was pretty comfortable in the start rolling around 40 and a small break got away very early. Garneau was represented and they were happy to go to the front of the peleton and keep the pace down. I had a thought of trying to bridge up however it was only maybe 10km into the race that they went and I had no idea what the parcours looked like so I decided to sit in the pack and save some energy. It was up and down all day with only a few minor incidents. The pack slowed suddenly at the bottom of this rolling hill and some people fell over onto me. I kept it upright but stopped briefly and managed to catch back up to the pack before the end of the climb. I heard one other crash go on behind me but didn't see it happen, and I did a little wheel rubbing with one guy who decided to swerve suddenly, but nothing at all disasterous.
I kept asking how many climbs were left and not really getting any good answers I just tried to stay calm. Jon VK said the big climb was at 70km and we did one short but steep climb around that time, so I figured that wasn't really it, though we did manage to split a few people off at that point. Finally we got to this major downhill which I realized meant the climb should be coming soon. I got up to the front on the descent but everyone was in a panic as we were down by the river and I found myself almost at the rear. I need to work on positioning! It hit the fan when the road went up and I saw some groups riding away from me, but I made it up to what seemed to be the second group at that time. At the top we had about 8 guys but when the road flattened out nobody seemed to know how to work together, or everyone was just tired out and we never made it back. I worked a little too hard with that group and got myself dropped from it when they went hard on one of the later hills and just rode in at a pretty relaxed pace. I came in about 8:30 behind the leaders and in the overall finished 34th (Same as my CLM placing). Here is a link to my Garmin file from the Road Race.
I would have of course liked to stay with the leaders but it went well for the most part shows me I still need to do a lot of training on the hills and more high intensity work.
This took much longer to write than I expected. The initial title was "Getting up to Date" but that will have to wait until after the weekend. I have the first edition of Mardis Lachine under my belt and I'm heading to Whiteface this weekend for an 85 mile race in the mountains.
Bonne Chance!
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