“Well, that sucked” best summarizes today’s race in Pocatello. Ted, Ben, and I drove to Pocatello to do a new race on the Utah Cycling Association calendar. Ben is a rider who recently moved to Boise and we quickly picked up. He had been racing aggressively in the George’s Spring Series so we figured if he’s going to do suicide attacks early in races, he might as well be in orange! Since today’s race started fairly late, we didn’t leave Boise until 10:30 AM. The skies were ominous the whole day but when we got to the town of Inkom, south of Pocatello, the sun was poking through the clouds making it feel pretty warm in the parking lot. We had plenty of time to register, get dressed and chit chat with the other riders.

I got on the trainer for 10 minutes, just to spin out the legs after the 4-hour drive. They didn’t feel particularly good, but not terrible either. We had a neutral roll-out for the first mile then the lead car honked it’s horn and the race was on! It was ballistic right from the start with the field immediately getting strung out. The course was a 7-mile circuit which we were supposed to do 6½ times. The first part of the loop was a gradual climb with a slight tailwind. Ted and I were towards the back of the pack and had to keep closing gaps to maintain contact with the field properly. Ben was nicely integrated into the lead group. There were a couple of lulls in the tempo which caused a few near-crashes in the field as the erratic speed changes were throwing people off. But most of the time I was hanging on for dear life at the back, wondering how much longer it would continue at that pace!

It got steeper towards the top of the climb and I popped of the lead group at the first hairpin turn. I knew I couldn’t hold the current pace any longer so I dropped off, but maintained a slightly slower tempo. I descended as fast as I could then got into TT-mode but by the time I completed a lap, I couldn’t see the lead group anymore. Since yesterday, I was feeling like I did when I was over-trained after Valley of the Sun. I should have recognized it yesterday and opted out of this race, but I didn’t. I decided that continuing to ride just to get in the saddle time, wasn’t in my best interest. So I slowed down a lot, hoping that Ted, who was behind me, would come by. Ted was with a group of about six riders and I jumped in with them. I told Ted that I was going to quit and he seemed like he was going to keep going. He had to get a wheel change which is why he was off the back. But when we got the steep part of the climb for the second time, he decided to join me. We rode back to the car which was a few miles away from the circuit. On the way back we had a major headwind and it lightly rained on us. We changed and jumped in the car then headed back to the course to cheer on Ben, who hopefully was still in the lead group.

We got to bottom of the race circuit just as Ben was making the turn to do another lap…and he was by himself, bummer! So we drove right up next to him and Ted yelled “Slacker!” out the window to him. He wasn’t looking too good so I don’t think he got the irony of the joke. Here we were, already in a nice warm car calling the lone member of IO still in the race, a slacker! At first, he said he told us to pick him up at the top of the climb, then on second thought, he’s like “screw it” and we just picked him up right there. So that’s three DNF’s for the Intermountain Orthopaedics elite squad!

We still had to drive to the top of the climb so we could flag down the wheel vehicles to retrieve our spare wheels. While we were waiting, it started to rain hard and the straggling riders that went by, looked like they were having a miserable time. We got to see the lead group go by and it was down to only eight riders with 2 more laps to go. Ouch! I got the wheel van to stop and we grabbed our spares. We didn’t stick around to see who’d win, and just headed out. On the way home, we had quite a few laughs at the turn of events. Here we were, driving 8 hours round-trip, to do a race in which not one of us finished! We all had our reasons, the altitude (the whole course was above 5000 feet), Ted’s hub that always loosens, my shoes that are so flexy I must be wasting power and just the plain fact that we all couldn’t go fast enough to stay with the lead. Oh, well. At least now we know the course for next year!

I still had a fun time and at least I know the course for next year when I’ll remember not to put in a super hard double-day only two days before the race! Now my plan is to take it easy and try to get my energy back for Walla Walla which is next weekend.