Tate's Race Report from The Tour Del Sol

         

 

        This last weekend I raced the Tour Del Sol stage race in St. George Utah, I knew the race was going to be tough but I was nowhere prepared for the pain that I was going to experience. I drove down Friday with a few of my team members in their RV, after pre-riding the course on Friday we settled in for the evening in preparation for Saturdays TT and crit. The TT course was an out and back style course, I started 30 seconds after Clint which was fun. I had a great time trial except for my encounter with a tumbleweed, at the turn around I was getting back on to the main road when I noticed a tumble weed being blown across the street. I remember telling myself that I needed to time this perfectly to avoid hitting it. I did just that! The tumbleweed hit my rear wheel and I had to reach down and pull it out with my bare hands I felt a lot like Taylor Phinney in last years Tour de France TTT (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRpy1vVdPzg). After a painful 12k I was able to finish with a time of 28:15 which was good enough for 15^th in the GC, I was pretty happy with my result despite my tumbleweed encounter and the gnarly 15mph head/cross wind.

            Later that day at 6pm we had our crit race at the old airport, it was a really fast and fun course that consisted of 4 corners on great asphalt. Unfortunately I went out too hard and ended up getting cooked, it was a crazy fast race we rode nearly 27 mile in 60 minutes and were hitting speeds in excess of 42 mph. I was able to finish in with the group at around 25^th place I believe. Clint did some serious work and chased down nearly every single breakaway because his teammate was sitting in 2^nd place overall. The crit was a lot of fun and made me realize that Criterium racing wouldn’t be so bad if all of the courses were like this one. One thing that’s nice about racing at an elite level is that you can take corners at 40 mph and feel completely safe because you know everyone in the peloton knows how to handle their bike.

            Sunday morning started way too early, at 6am I reluctantly pulled myself out of bed to get ready for the day’s 85 miles road race. The weather was surprisingly cold for this time of year, when our race started it was 29 degrees outside. The race was the hardest race I have ever done in my life. The course was a loop that started in Gunlock state park and went up through the mountain and up a ridiculously steep climb known as “the wall”, on our first lap we rode the wall at a relatively moderate pace. The second time around was crazy; I don’t know if it was because of my fitness or the fact that I had done a TT and a crit the night before but that race made me go through Hell and back. There were several times during that I debated throwing in the towel. I managed thanks to Clint who willingly took a few of my pulls in the pace line (thanks buddy). In the end I rolled in a few minutes behind the leaders at 3:48 the pace was relentless full of attacks and climbs and was definitely a good judge of my preseason training. About 15 racers had to abandon from Sundays stage because of the pace or mechanicals, in the end I finished 25^th for the stage and 19^th overall. I know its hard for me to truly express how hard Sundays race was so I’ll tell you this as soon as I crossed the finish line I got off my bike and walked over behind the officials car and threw up. I was seeing stars for a few hours afterwards and I know everyone else was. All things considered it was great race I would highly recommend it to anyone and its on my calendar for next year. I learned a lot made some new friends, and most importantly had a great time riding with some truly talented racers from all over the West coast.