Nationals Report

I came across an article on one of my favourite cycling blogs, The Inner Ring, about how the weekend of National Championships in cycling is the strangest day of racing all year. I found myself nodding my head and even though I was prepared for a thorough beating on Saturday, reflecting on why the race was the way it was made me feel just slightly better about my result this past weekend.

If you have checked out the results from the race, you will see that I along with nearly 75% of the rest of the field DNF'd at the Canadian National Championship, primarily as a result of Team Spidertech throwing down all day coupled with one of the most selective courses the championship has seen in years. It wasn't just the climb at Rattlesnake that made the course selective, but the false flat at the top, and the long stretches of flat roads in the crosswind. Once you got separated from the charging peleton it was game over, and so went the story for me.

I was dropped in the climb, partly due to some guys falling over in front of me when the pack bunched up at the bottom, but mostly due to a lack of HTFU and not looking quite enough like this guy. All jokes aside, I am disappointed I didn't get very long to ride with the big boys, but I am hoping this is going to fuel my fire to train well going into the Ontario Provincial Championship and Cyclocross season.

Retiring from the race early did have it's benefits though, I didn't have to eat any Gels which are pretty gross but a necessity, and I got to watch most of the race while enjoying free espressos from the guys at La Bicicletta, which was excellent. It played out more or less how I imagined it would. There were a few short lived breaks, and eventually one (that Spidertech was happy with) stuck for the rest of the day. Spidertech had 3 guys in the break (Kevin Lacombe, Zach Bell and Will Routley) with one other, Rob Britton from Bissell. The guys could work together and in the end, Spidertech could continually attack Britton until he ran out of gas and could definitely take the win. It turned out to be an even better day for Spidertech when Britton showed signs of weakness and was dropped from the break group, which had already dropped Lacombe, who I would say is most of the time considered a sprinter, and did well to stay away with the break on that course. Tuft was on form and managed to TT up to the break in the mean time, keeping the odds in favour of Spidertech, but ultimately resulting in a podium sweep. At this point I was really praying for an epic victory salute, such as this one:

But in the end we got a much more subdued salute, as the young guns gave old man Tuft a gift he has been wanting for many years now. Nice riding guys, see you next year.