Black River Grand Prix Race Report

 It's been a long time since I wrote anything here about bike racing, but I had a really fun time racing my bike up in Vermont this weekend and I wrote up a pretty wordy account of it on B2C2 Slack.  Figured I'd archive it here in case anyone still reads blogs and/or ever uses Google to find out if this race is awesome (it is).

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So I showed up the night before at Harry's dope campsite at Smuggler's Notch pretty hungry.  No worries though because I can just eat one of my clif bars before I go to sleep right?  Haha wait, I go to hit the Mint Clif Bar and Harry is like "aren't those caffeinated??"OOPS.  So we got to choose between sleep and calories and we chose sleep.  But I woke up starving, ate an absurd amount of breakfast, ate another clif bar before the race, ate all 4 gels in my pockets during the race, and still was barely not bonking by the end of it.Anyway the race started with a silly paved prologue lap that did absolutely nothing to split up the field and left us all playing a game of foot-down at the first singletrack anyway.   It notably exposed @Luke Plummer's lack criterium experience as he ended up back in the Colin-and-Harry zone which is not where he belongs.Trails started off super fun and flowy and it was easy to go too hard.  I had 14 year old Matt Northcott riding the HYPE TRAIN all over my back wheel which was not helping me stop going too hard.  I kept trying to let him by but I finally had to just pull over on a double track and make him go past... but UGH @Harry Gordenstein also went by and then we went up a climb, and it became clear they were going to be pedally bois today and I was going to be bike handling boi today.We rode some narrow trails on the edge of the lake and a guy ahead of me fell off a bridge on a sidehill and tumbled down the hill like 15 feet until he was almost in the lake, it was awesome.I bike handled my way back up to Harry and then he SMASHED ME on a double track climb.There was a bunch more fun semi-machine built trail and then some authentic af New England gnar trail and I noticed my ability to ride back to the Harry Gordenstein Zone (HGZ) on the tech was decreasing as I became more interested in resting than attacking.We came to an enormous grassy climb in a field and my soul entirely left my body.  Harry also left my field of view.More bikes were ridden and gels were eaten and I became increasingly invested in the race ending before I ran entirely out of fervor.   But then!  With the end of race approaching on the last dirt road section, PUBLIC ENEMY #1 HARRY was suddenly visible on a climb.  Surely this is not because you can see like 90 seconds ahead on a dirt road climb, it's because we are CATCHING HARRY and returning to the HGZ!  Suddenly I didn't want the race to end, I wanted more race time because Harry was clearly cracking and I was going to crush him.We entered the final trail section and mysteriously Harry was not in sight, almost as if you can't see as far ahead in fast twisty singletrack as you can on a dirt road?  It felt like I was ripping and should be seeing Harry around every corner.... yet despite my Puck Pieterse-quality riding he was mysteriously nowhere to be found.I decided Harry had probably just taken a wrong turn and that's why I couldn't see him, but then, on like the last 10 seconds on singletrack I see a blue B2C2 jersey.  I attempted to drop a Langer-ish 1300w sprint but I am merely a 1000w end-of-race kinda guy and it wasn't enough... despite a furious and hypoxic all-out sprint through the final field I crossed the line 2 seconds behind Harry and now will have to live with this abject failure for the rest of my life.

Comments

MB said…
I welcome this return to blogging! Kudos to Harry, who I assume is younger and on a fancier bike and those are the reasons you succumbed (succame?!) to his cycling prowess.
6/12/2023 11:38 AM
Colin R said…
Sadly I think my bike is equally fancy, but I can confirm he's 26 which I feel like it worth 2-3 seconds over a 2 hour race.
6/12/2023 11:43 AM
gewilli said…
WEB LOGGGGGGGS
6/12/2023 12:21 PM
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