Patterson Pass – Surprises

Strava for this race: https://www.strava.com/activities/15335457322

30 seconds. Say one last prayer. How do you say it, Steve? How do you say it in Greece? Uh, and I forget the rest of it. All right, gentlemen on the whistle. Good luck. Thank you. You heard it. This is a tough course. We start off for a mile and then we start climbing for four into the wind. Hey, second community. This is Steve Gruses the cycling Greek. Already there were some riders that didn’t want a lolly gag and I didn’t want these guys to get away. So then I jumped to get on them. I didn’t want to start chasing them up that climb. Jumping forward just a little bit. We’re now on that climb. Now this course is about 44 46 mi. I think it’s two laps. At each lap, we start off with this huge climb that has that’s getting steeper as we go higher. In fact, there’s two walls on it and it finishes on a wall. There’s another climb in the middle of the lap and then it finishes on a climb, a small climb. This course meets the criteria for a mountainous course as it has 1,000 ft of climbing for every 10 mi. Not only does it have climbing, but it has wind. Each year, you don’t know how strong the wind’s going to be. where we all parked, there was no wind, but you look up the climb and you can see all the windmills were working. When I went for my warm-up, that’s when I could tell the wind was going to be an issue. There were times during the warm-up when I was on a crosswind that I was leaning about four, maybe 5° into the wind just to go straight. Now, this wind on the climb helps, not because it’s a tailwind pushing us up, but because it’s a headwind, keeping those faster climbers at bay. As long as I’m tucked in, I’m good. But if there’s a gap that develops, that’s when one can get in trouble. That’s one reason I filled the gap so quickly when Mark started to slow up a bit. I don’t know if he just needed to uh grab a bottle or if he was having a little trouble. So, this is good segue to talk about the writers. The rider currently pulling us up the mountain, and he did so for most the mountain, I’m talking about 98%, is Gilbert Tarin. I don’t ever remember racing with him, but I have some uh fellow racers that are familiar with him. He won Winchester this year in the 60 plus three sports fives. That’s a race where I won, you know, in the 65s and he does Baker City each year and judging from what he’s doing now, I’m thinking he’s a pretty strong rider. The writer in back of him in front of me, that’s Steve Clifton from Penvell. He’s a strong climber. He’s a strong sprinter. Pretty much strong everything. The writer in back of me is Mark Edwards from Body Concepts. I remember him earlier in the year. I mean, I raced with him a number of times, but I remember we were off the back and it was his first race back, I think it was, and he was pulling so strong I was barely hanging on with him. And eventually I had to go off his wheel. So strong guy. In back of him are the preacher, his teammate, Antonio Corgos of Pen Bellow, and Aaron Gray of San Jose Bicycle Club. There were only seven of us, and that meant there weren’t a lot of people to hide behind. Now, if you look at back of us, you see that we’re starting to split up. It ends up that we become a group of four. The wind is so strong that I’m doing what I can just to stay with the person in front of me. I’d rather stay in Mark’s wheel because he’s a bigger guy, but he’s back there, so it’s Steve Clifton. I’m hugging the we love. I don’t know when in the climb, but at a certain point I looked back and I saw that there were only four of us. I knew that the critical point was that I had to get to the top with the other three. The thing is, even in my younger days when I was 65 or 66, I never made it to the top with the leading group. If you’re off the back of a small group, by the time you get to the top by say 30 seconds, because it drops down so fast on the other side, you’ll never catch them. At least I would never catch them. I’m going to speed the rest of this climb up. When you look in the rear camera, you can see that the other draft riders are still in sight. One is maybe close or it’s really stretched, but as we get to steeper steeper ground and with the wind as it is, they’re starting to fall back. So now it’s again just the four of us as we get higher and particularly if we’re on open ground, the wind gets worse. The combination of twisty roads and raised or flat surfaces that you’re passing by make it a challenge to determine which way that wind’s going to hit you at that next turn. I’m trying to protect myself from the wind as best I can, but I’m still hitting 400 watts plus while sticking close to Steven Clifton’s wheel. I want to take a moment to talk about when we lined up to start the race. Before we received instructions, they announced that next year is going to be the last year for a local promoter that puts on most the races, and that’s Vevel Promo. This year, we had 29 race weekends in which 22 of those were VEL promo races. Now, three of those 22 actually had on another day of the weekend a race put on by someone else. So, that means when that promoter goes, unless something changes, there’s only going to be 10 race weekends left. quickly jump into the action screen. Gilbert had enough and he pulled off. Steve Clifton took over, but I knew he wasn’t going to stay there. So, I put in a little bit of a dig, learning from what Rob Anderson told me what he did at districts. Put in a little dig, test the competition. I distanced a couple of them, but Steve Clifton with me, but I couldn’t maintain that dig. So, then I slowed up and just waited for everybody to regroup. We’re on a steep section. As they come by, I’m waiting for Mark to come by so I can get on his wheel. He is the biggest windbreak they have of the three. Okay, so back to that pre-race talk. They put the call out that for someone to take over all the races or for some teams to take over some of the races because dropping twothirds of the race weekends is going to be devastating. Back to the action on the screen. We are on the first of two walls. Looks like Steve Clifton put in a bit of a dig. As strong as he is, I’m not worried about it because I can hang with the other two and then if needs be, we can catch him on the other end. But, uh, he slows up a bit and we regroup again. So, now we’re on top of that wall, and we’re heading toward the finish of this climb, which finishes on another steep wall. It’s getting windier and windier, not only the higher that we climb, but also the longer the race goes on. I’m still feeling strong, but I have to be careful. No matter what I feel here, it’s going to be worse when I get to that wall. And in a moment, you’ll see that wall. There were 119 that were pre-registered for this race, and I think we picked up a few more. Now, we have this race next week, which is Leville Gap, which is another tough road race, and we only have 54 signed up so far. I’m hoping enough register before tonight’s deadline so they don’t cancel the race. I have this sped up to about six times normal, so we’re really going pretty slow. I’m still feeling strong enough, but I realize that I just have to keep on it. The wind is getting worse. It is like a little Venturi effect from uh from coming over the top. In other words, it’s like we’re going through a wind tunnel, especially when we get to the very top. Steve puts another dig and then slows up. We all slow up. So, this is normal speed now. Now, the wind is really wicked. And now the concern is getting blown off the road on a descent, which is almost as steep as what we just climbed. Fortunately, it’s not as twisty. They let me take the lead, and I was comfortable with that. By the time I got to the bottom, they were actually quite a bit off my wheel, and the temptation would have been just to keep going, but still too early in the race. There’s still another climb coming up before we do this climb again. Jumping forward a bit here. We take that right turn to start that climb. That climb is nowhere near like what we just climbed now, but it is significant, especially as a second climb. So, let’s jump back to the uh to the registration numbers last year for Leville Gap, the race that we’re going to see if it’s going to be happening next week. I think promo had about 85 registrations and they elected to go with the race a month or so earlier. They had a gravel grand fondo which went over the same course as Leville Gap but did it backwards. And the gravel section was that Leville has about three sections of gravel in it. Uh maybe uh a couple miles with each section. Anyways, while we only had 85 registrations, that other event had a,000 registrations and a little over twice the price at $100 a reg. I’m guessing they had age group designations and they were still racing the event. You know, try to do it as fast as they can. You know, go figure. All right, that’s it for my ranting. Back to the action on the screen. So, on this climb, I’m feeling pretty good still. Toward the bottom of the scent, I went to the front to put in a little dig on this little riser that’s coming up. Not so much to test, although there was a little bit of factor of that, but also to just get this part of the climb over with. When we finally get to the top, we’re all still together. We descend down to the flat fast section, which we now has a tailwind, which we’re actually going 40 miles an hour on flats and and very slight declines. And we make that right turn, do another three miles, and we get to the finish line, or what will be the finish line. We start lap two. And then we’re on that major climb again. We’ll catch him. When I saw him go, I was thinking he wanted to reach the top well before we did so we can just cruise on in. If that’s actually what he was going to do, I figured if the three of us stay together, we’ll have the best chance to catch him on the flats. It also may have been the case that he was looking for one of us to go with him. And if and if one of us did, primarily Gilbert, then he would have kept pushing it over the top and the other two would have chased but never caught them. After 3 minutes of chasing, we still haven’t caught him. The wind is getting pretty bad. Then all of a sudden, boom, Gus comes by, blows me off the course. Well, this sucked. Pond water with a straw. While I started making up ground to them just a little bit, it was hellish with this wind. Gilbert is watching all this and he’s in the back as Mark was leading the the climb for most of this climb. After a bit, maybe because I’m making up a little bit of ground or at least not giving up, Gilbert takes over the lead, pulls Mark up and they catch Steve Clifton. So now I’m chasing the three of them. I never catch them. Many times this year I’ve been in this situation and I get caught by somebody that’s been dropped earlier. So now I’m worried about the preacher. As I make it over the second major climb of this lap, my leg, my right leg is starting to feel things. It actually was starting before here, but now it’s really starting to get aggravated, but it’s not at the debilitating part it was in the last race. Jumping ahead as I’m coming onto the fast tailwind section. The rider in front of me is not part of my race, but his teammate at least has the same uniform. The rider in back of me that you see. He is. I haven’t realized this yet. It’s not the preacher. It’s Antonio Corgas. He comes by me and he keeps drilling it. It’s like he has a motor on his bike. At least all I have to do is just stick on his wheel, but that is a challenge, too. I’m thinking, okay, damn. Well, at least there’s a five place podium coming up and uh you know, I’ll get fifth place cuz I’m certainly not going to outsprint him. I dig get on his wheel and I love to say I enjoyed the ride, but he’s going so strong I have to concentrate to stay on his wheel. This is something like 8 minutes later. We’re on a small descent. We’re both free pedaling and so I’m just taking a little bit of a rest even though I’ve been on his wheel this whole time. All of a sudden, he starts pedaling and starts inching away. I’m not worried about it right now because I’m figuring, okay, we’re on a descent and I’ll catch him. But he uh lets up, starts pedaling again, and then slowly gets away from me. So now you can see I’m doing over 500 watts downhill just to try and catch him, and I’m not catching him. If you look at the graphics on the top of the screen, you’ll see that we’re almost done with this race. And but I’m still thinking, “Oh great, now the preacher is going to catch me.” And I’m going to go down to sixth. No podium. And worse than that, it would not be indicative to how strong I was riding during this race until the wind blew me off the course. But lo and behold, the weird stuff isn’t done yet. We’re nearing that right turn. The right in front of me is not Antonio. The rider in front of that rider is after that right turn. I think it’s about 3 miles to the finish that has, you know, some flats, a little bit of descent, but some climbing in it. There’s Antonio with the right turn in front of him. There’s Antonio with a right turn in back of him. Antonio. Antonio. So now I’m thinking that he’s going to realize what he did, quickly turn around, and then chase me down. I have three miles to get to the finish. My right leg has degraded to the point where I’m putting in a lot more power with my left leg to keep the speed up to keep whatever speed up. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had the double-sided Wahoo power meter, but this is the first ride, the first race where I actually hit 50/50 with the left and the right leg. Judging from previous races, I would have hit 4852. And probably the reason why for the 50/50 is because of uh the extra power I’m using with my right leg, with my left leg, excuse me. Right now, I’m now on the finishing climb. That rider behind me is not Antonio, but I’m riding like it is. Even though it’s a dumbass thought, I’m keep thinking that he’s going to motor up like he’s on a motorcycle. Well, as it turns out, obviously he doesn’t. I get fourth place and some pretty good stories that I can make a video with. I hope you enjoyed this video and you got something out of it. Bunch of comments that you can comment on, so please leave them below. You know the drill. 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