Pedalling Squares

A Mutha

Sorry about no postings - we didn't have phone service in our hotel, errr, I mean house, in Bisbee. So let's get started . . .



Vuelta de Bisbee
The Vuelta de Bisbee is a 3 day, 4 stage race in Southern Arizona. It consists of an uphill prologue time trial on Friday, a 46 mile road race, and a flat 10 mile time trial on Saturday and then another 60 mile road race on Sunday. Vaughn and I will be racing the 30+/Cat 1-4 race.

Catching up
We got into Phoenix ok, scored the upgrade on the car rental - so now we're in a boss Suzuki XL7. I don't think we could have managed with anything smaller. Stayed over at my parents house in Scottsdale. We didn't get in until midnight, but I think we both slept well.

We goofed around in the morning a little but got some good food and left around 10. We made a bit of a long stop at SuperGo in Chandler to drool some and then load up on food. Got into Tucson around 12:30, picked up some spare wheels at Chris's house (thanks, dude) and were on our way for food. We scored some lunch and were on our way to Bisbee.

We rolled into Bisbee around 3 pm and got registered. Then we went up to our hotel, the Jonquil. I guess they screwed up our reservation *sigh* so she was giving us options. "Well we could put you both in separate rooms tonight and then you could have the same room Saturday". That would have worked, but we have a lot of stuff between the two of us and moving it after doing 2 races on Saturday, would have sucked. But it appeared we had no options. So then she says, "Or you could stay in our little 2 bedroom house". Gee, that's a touch decision. So aside from some steps we had to climb (if you're not aware, Bisbee is like San Francisco, except hilly), and no phone service, we got a nice deal. It's a 2 bedroom, with a sitting room, bathroom, patio, and nicely furnished. We hurriedly put our bikes together and went to check the start times for the prologue.

Prologue

The Course
Distance: 2.7 miles
Vertical: 840 feet up
Conditions: sunny, 70's

Description:
It starts in downtown Bisbee on a gentle climb. Then at about the halfway point it gets a little steeper. So if you treat it like a flat TT at the start, you'll be cooked when the going really gets tough. Then you leave Bisbee and climb up above town and finish "on top of the divide". 2.7 miles? How hard could it be?!?!?!

How it went down
I got a pretty good warm up and got to drive the course once and ride it once. The start went well, I chose a 53x21 starting gear to get things rolling. I quickly chunked it into the 14 and was feeling good. I heard my HR monitor start beeping which meant I was just over 170bpm - just about where I wanted to be.

I was 1 minute behind my old buddy Doug Loveday. Doug used to be a pro rider in the early 90's but never quite made it. Nevertheless, I learned quite a bit from him about bike racing. Hopefully we'll have some time to catch up.

Despite the cool Euro setting - a prologue through the middle of the city - there weren't many fans there. Oh well, I still felt Euro. Then the steep stuff started. I dropped it to the small chainring and really started to feel the climb in my legs now - I had to back off some. I found a nice gear I could spin to help the legs recover some. Now it was starting to hurt. My heart rate must have been right around 170 (I didn't look) because it kept beeping and then stopping, beeping and then stopping. I could see my 30 second man (the guy who started 30 secs ahead of me) and from my count he was only about 15 up on me now - so that was good.

I came up to the 1K sign (the coolest 1K sign ever) and was just trying to spin my gear - not much longer now, just keep turning it. I passed a few guys who were obviously gassed so that made me feel better.

When I got to the 200 meter sign, I dropped it into the 14 or 15 and went as hard as I could to the line.
I finished in about 11:30. Not a bad time, good enough for 10th place. Loveday finished in 10:37. The best time overall in the Pro category was another old acquaintance from UofA, Andrew Miller with a 9:47 or something. Un-farking-real!!! But Doug's time would have put him in about 15th in the Pro category.

So I'm happy with that. I don't think I could have gone too much harder so that's really all you can ask for in a TT effort. I've got a serious allergy attack I'm dealing with, so hopefully that'll go away for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a tough stressful day since we're doing 2 races. Could be windy, too!!! Alright, that's all for now . . .