Quebec master men's race report

click for biggerHey race fans – Quebec Provincials took place this past weekend in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, a hilly little town just south of Tremblant.  Rolling 20 km TT on Saturday, and hilly, if not mountainous, 110 km road race on Sunday. 

TT’s are not that exciting to watch, and probably less exciting to write or read about – but Saturday I had a day.  Since Catskills, coach Fraser has been burying me, but we took our foot off the gas with about five days to go and it seemed to have the desired effect.  I had one of my better TT efforts ever, and won by a minute over a strong field that had me worried at the outset.  The combined results had me 5^th, just 28 seconds behind the 1-2 winner, which I was also pretty pleased with.  Anyways, a second Provincial TT championship was a nice reward for some hard work, and hopefully a sign of some return to form.

Sunday, clouds and wind greeted us, as well as some pretty chilly temps.  I was happy to be in the good company of teammate Tom Stevens, who’d also hosted me at his palatial cottage at Tremblant the night before – thanks Tom! Nice field of 75 or so assembled for a 110 km point to point race.  The profile wasn’t crazy hilly, but I don’t think there was 250 meters of flat in the entire race.  The first 50 k was mostly rolling descending with a headwind, some really fun, twisty, although optionally paved Quebec roads, and it was fairly obvious nothing was going to be going early. I spent the first 20 k chatting about whatever Tom was talking about at the back of the race…  About 25 k I decided to stick my nose in the wind a bit and took off up a big roller with Alex Boiteau, the big Trek rider that has won a bunch of races this year, and was third in the TT… if I was going to get anywhere early in the race, I needed a Trek rider with me – they had three of the strongest riders in the race, along with Erwan Peres and Eric Prevost, but while he and I tried a few times over the next 10 k, there was too many guys too strong early on, and I went back to the back to chat with Tom some more.

At about 50 k, we came out onto a nicely paved secondary highway with apparently a series of big rollers…

Tom and I were still tail gunning when the first climb came up and the Trek boys drilled it, and it was all hands on deck.  I rode around 60 guys and got to the head of affairs just over the top – okay, race brain now on, glad it didn’t cost me… next big climb 2 kms later… a couple of attacks, a couple of counters, and all of sudden, 10 of us have a big gap, and everyone’s there that would have been expected.  Tom just missed the split, but all 3 Trek boys were there, and other threats like Miguel Sanchez and Luc Blain also made it. Local boy Gino Ainsley was also there, albeit only for about 5 minutes – suffering a front flat at 70 kph – well done to keep it under control Gino. So Sanchez, Blain and I let the Treks get to work – it was their race to win now, and Boiteau and Peres drove it hard for the next 10 k – we all took a few turns, but I have to say those 2 opened the gap almost single-handedly – and both being tall, strong guys, we were getting into the low 90s on every descent.  Meanwhile Prevost was also getting the perfect free ride… not a great situation for me, but we still had a long way to go, so I decided to just wait and see how things played out a little closer to home. 

With about 30 km to go, we turned off the big road, and the gap was fully established.  We got into some more almost single lane, twisty, rolling, ascending roads, with fast blind corners, sketch pavement and the odd wooden bridge… and hostilities were renewed. Sanchez and I let the Trek guys keep up the work till about 20 to go, and then in an almost unspoken plan, we started to work them over. He went, Boiteau would bring it back, I’d counter, Peres would bring it back, and so on about 5 or 7 times each… finally Sanchez was given some rope – an apt description with the horsepower left in break… I hadn’t wanted to get away alone, rather I wanted to force the 10 down to 4 or 5 with only 1 or maybe 2 treks left. But Sanchez went solo, and while I tried going across a few times, I don’t think he ever really got to more than about 15 seconds, while I couldn’t muster the strength to break free. I did some work with Boiteau and Munger to bring it back finally, and with 2km to go, we hit the last climb.

As Boiteau closed the final gap to Sanchez, Peres attacked hard up the 10% 300m climb and got a nice gap.  Someone covered it, Prevost covered that, and I got on Prevost’s wheel – the four us hit the 1k to go with a downhill sprint finish awaiting… The pace was good but from behind, Boiteau powered back up and pulled alongside Prevost, the big man gave his last effort to drop Prevost off at 250 meters and he shot off the wheel like a missile. I went at the exact right time, but was second on to his wheel – Munger lost the wheel, but was still strong enough to hold me off for second, while I got third.

Really fun race, excellently marshalled as well by dozens of moto-cops, thru some really crazy and exhilarating roads, that ended up providing about 3500 feet of total climbing. Big Tom rode strong on his home turf to come home in 12^th and for the third time, twice at provincials and once at nationals, I did the first-third TT-RR podium combo – weird, but I felt pretty good with the weekend for sure.  Now on to Green Mountain to wrap the year in style… I hope!

Ciao,

DG