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race report
October 2009 
Tour of the Gila Race Report
Posted on May 11th, 2009
by 
Cara
Cara
Tour of the Gila
Writing race reports while you’re racing at altitude is not that easy to do. Here it is after the fact.
I took two days driving to Silver City. I left Sunday afternoon, after picking up a very generously donated loaner disc. I spent Sunday night is Tucson and had a great ride Monday morning. I met up with super-teammate-guestrider Ruth C and we caravanned to NM, where I stayed in an amazing host-house with TCTMJ and Irish Nat Champ Olivia thanks to the Salmon family at High-Lonesome Books.
Our team of Kelly, Ruth, Olivia, Megan, Holly, and myself met up Tuesday morning to ride the TT course. It was as hilly and windy as I remembered. Fun fun. Olivia, being Irish and liking green, told me the secret to racing well at altitude was to take chlorophyll. I did. It made my insides turn green. Hmmmm. Lots of eating and hydration and I was ready for Wednesday’s Mogollon road race.
Kristin Armstrong and Allison Powers were both present, but with no teammates. Colavita, Webcor, ValueAct, Lip Smackers, DFT, Specialized, ColoBike Law were present with full teams. And Touchstone of course, but I’m sure you’ve figured that out.
Day 1:
So I have a tendency to spend a bit too much time of the front. Bad for race legs, but great for photo-ops.
Since I’m not going to give away team secrets, I’ll just talk about myself. I’m getting good at that, no? I covered quite a few attacks. It was fun, but my rear tubular slid off the tufo tape. Remember when I switched from glue to tape? I’ll never use tape again. The guys at Gila Hike and Bike saved my sorry butt and did a quick re-glue…but I digress. Kelly and Ruth went into the climb in great positions and did well dealing with the Armstrong firepower (Yes, lance was there, but I was much more concerned with Kristin A, who was making me hurt everyday.) I made it up the climb at typical moose pace.
Digression:
Silver city is pretty cool. They have a great coffee shop and a vegan/raw vegan restaurant. How awesome is that?! Not everything was peachy though. Read on…
Day 1 is a point to point race with a “mountain top” finish. You need to get a ride back to SC. You can either ride down the climb and meet your car or drive down in your follow car and then hook up with your other riders. Two Touchstoners opted to ride down with J in the follow car. Since the men were finishing just after us, they had to wait. Then they got boxed in my the Bob’s Bicycles Team. BBT blocked the exit to the parking area. Touchstone, and many other teams, asked them to please move. First they said no, then they took 15 minutes to move. When Touchstone could finally get around them, they yelled “Good luck tomorrow sluts!” Hmmmm. Does that sound like good sportspersonship? Not really. Poor Bobs. Maybe their English isn’t that good and they meant to say “Sorry for blocking you, we had a really bad day and we’re pretty tired and cranky. We hope you do well tomorrow!” That’s what I’ll image they meant.
Day 2:
I was excited for Inner Loop since I had a great race there last year. Not so this year. BLAH! I totally messed up and had a bit of mind-body dualism problems between myself and my legs. Needless to say I came off the pace and was in a groupetto working too hard trying to not loose great big gobs of time. Olivia, on the other hand, did AWESOME and came in 5th!
Day 3:
Do you know Kristin is the Olympic TT champ? How fun is it going into a TT know that? I also made a wager with Ruth, which she won but 10 seconds, so I’m now her slave. TTing is something I’m slowly getting better at. I’m about 5-6% faster on all my tts this year. The same held true at Gila. In retrospect my TT was my best placing: 31st. Ruth came 10th!
Day 4:
Crits. Sigh. I don’t want to talk about it. Olivia did awesome. So did Ruth and Kelly. I’m on a crit crusade now. After Redlands I’d thought I figured it out. Shit. I got a very stern lecture from TCTC/MJ after. Oh Boy. That wasn’t fun. That’s all.
Day 5:
I was a bit apprehensive since I thought I was going to have a good day on day 4 and obviously didn’t. Last year I had a bad day on the final stage. Sigh. It started out fine and my job was to cover stuff in the second half of the race. Olivia as doing tones of work, so after a break got away I tried to help. I managed to bridge up to the group of 4 solo. Yay. But then tried to work too soon and fell off. ARGH!!! That was the biggest disappointment since that break stuck. Blah. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. I helped to keep Ruth and Kelly in a good spot going in to the climb and then pulled off on the first switchback. The climb was fine. Ruth and Kelly came top 20.
Overall I had some good days and bad days. Although my result was much better at Redlands I think I learned much more at Gila. Of course getting dropped sucks. I’m sick of it. TCTC/MJ is now on a crusade to punish me with lots of zone 5 work. That’s making me so not cranky. HA! It was great getting to ride with Kelly, Olivia, Ruth, Megan, and Holly. Many thanks to TCTC/MJ and Steve for their help.
Up next – many many crits.
Sigh.
Writing race reports while you’re racing at altitude is not that easy to do. Here it is after the fact.
I took two days driving to Silver City. I left Sunday afternoon, after picking up a very generously donated loaner disc. I spent Sunday night is Tucson and had a great ride Monday morning. I met up with super-teammate-guestrider Ruth C and we caravanned to NM, where I stayed in an amazing host-house with TCTMJ and Irish Nat Champ Olivia thanks to the Salmon family at High-Lonesome Books.
Our team of Kelly, Ruth, Olivia, Megan, Holly, and myself met up Tuesday morning to ride the TT course. It was as hilly and windy as I remembered. Fun fun. Olivia, being Irish and liking green, told me the secret to racing well at altitude was to take chlorophyll. I did. It made my insides turn green. Hmmmm. Lots of eating and hydration and I was ready for Wednesday’s Mogollon road race.
Kristin Armstrong and Allison Powers were both present, but with no teammates. Colavita, Webcor, ValueAct, Lip Smackers, DFT, Specialized, ColoBike Law were present with full teams. And Touchstone of course, but I’m sure you’ve figured that out.
Day 1:
So I have a tendency to spend a bit too much time of the front. Bad for race legs, but great for photo-ops.
From Casey B. Gibson -- I'm sure there's some copyright stuff inv
Since I’m not going to give away team secrets, I’ll just talk about myself. I’m getting good at that, no? I covered quite a few attacks. It was fun, but my rear tubular slid off the tufo tape. Remember when I switched from glue to tape? I’ll never use tape again. The guys at Gila Hike and Bike saved my sorry butt and did a quick re-glue…but I digress. Kelly and Ruth went into the climb in great positions and did well dealing with the Armstrong firepower (Yes, lance was there, but I was much more concerned with Kristin A, who was making me hurt everyday.) I made it up the climb at typical moose pace.
Digression:
Silver city is pretty cool. They have a great coffee shop and a vegan/raw vegan restaurant. How awesome is that?! Not everything was peachy though. Read on…
Day 1 is a point to point race with a “mountain top” finish. You need to get a ride back to SC. You can either ride down the climb and meet your car or drive down in your follow car and then hook up with your other riders. Two Touchstoners opted to ride down with J in the follow car. Since the men were finishing just after us, they had to wait. Then they got boxed in my the Bob’s Bicycles Team. BBT blocked the exit to the parking area. Touchstone, and many other teams, asked them to please move. First they said no, then they took 15 minutes to move. When Touchstone could finally get around them, they yelled “Good luck tomorrow sluts!” Hmmmm. Does that sound like good sportspersonship? Not really. Poor Bobs. Maybe their English isn’t that good and they meant to say “Sorry for blocking you, we had a really bad day and we’re pretty tired and cranky. We hope you do well tomorrow!” That’s what I’ll image they meant.
Day 2:
I was excited for Inner Loop since I had a great race there last year. Not so this year. BLAH! I totally messed up and had a bit of mind-body dualism problems between myself and my legs. Needless to say I came off the pace and was in a groupetto working too hard trying to not loose great big gobs of time. Olivia, on the other hand, did AWESOME and came in 5th!
Day 3:
Do you know Kristin is the Olympic TT champ? How fun is it going into a TT know that? I also made a wager with Ruth, which she won but 10 seconds, so I’m now her slave. TTing is something I’m slowly getting better at. I’m about 5-6% faster on all my tts this year. The same held true at Gila. In retrospect my TT was my best placing: 31st. Ruth came 10th!
Day 4:
Crits. Sigh. I don’t want to talk about it. Olivia did awesome. So did Ruth and Kelly. I’m on a crit crusade now. After Redlands I’d thought I figured it out. Shit. I got a very stern lecture from TCTC/MJ after. Oh Boy. That wasn’t fun. That’s all.
Day 5:
I was a bit apprehensive since I thought I was going to have a good day on day 4 and obviously didn’t. Last year I had a bad day on the final stage. Sigh. It started out fine and my job was to cover stuff in the second half of the race. Olivia as doing tones of work, so after a break got away I tried to help. I managed to bridge up to the group of 4 solo. Yay. But then tried to work too soon and fell off. ARGH!!! That was the biggest disappointment since that break stuck. Blah. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. I helped to keep Ruth and Kelly in a good spot going in to the climb and then pulled off on the first switchback. The climb was fine. Ruth and Kelly came top 20.
Overall I had some good days and bad days. Although my result was much better at Redlands I think I learned much more at Gila. Of course getting dropped sucks. I’m sick of it. TCTC/MJ is now on a crusade to punish me with lots of zone 5 work. That’s making me so not cranky. HA! It was great getting to ride with Kelly, Olivia, Ruth, Megan, and Holly. Many thanks to TCTC/MJ and Steve for their help.
Up next – many many crits.
Sigh.
Access: Public
