There's this little race 400 miles from here that keeps me coming back. My first season of regular racing was '05 and showing up in Baker City as a cat 4 I honestly thought my strong TT and what I thought was solid climbing ability would get me good overall result. Instead it was my first real experience of how brutally hard stage racing can be. As Travis might say, Elkhorn punches you in the ovaries on the good days and stabs you in the back on the bad ones. I got steamrolled on the first big climb in the 90 degree dry heat and was never competitive... I rode a pretty good TT in retrospect, but was disappointed at the time to see my name listed 4th on the day. Some guy named Justin Vanhulle took the TT win that year.

In the years since my introduction to Elkhorn, I've had all sorts of interesting experiences. In 2006, I was so heavilly dehydrated after the first stage that I was bent over the toilet all night. I've fallen for the pee break attack on day 4 and had to ride 70 miles off the back. There was the "alternate" stage 1 in 2007 where we descended into the furnace of the powder river canyon with 115° ambient temperatures on the road. I've seen friends go up the road in 80 mile breaks only to finish an hour down. Crits have been cancelled because of rain-slickened roads and stages have been shortened because of snow. I've flatted more times than I can remember and I've had a wheel collapse mid-race. None of these things elicit happy feelings, but they are memorable. Baker City is a great place to go race bikes and all of these experiences keep me coming back.

This year, I spent a solid month where pretty much everything bike related was with Elkhorn in mind. I won't say I followed a training and nutrition plan to perfection, but things went pretty well. I had some solid days racing and had some confidence going into Baker City. Day 1 had perfect weather, not too hot or cold. We rolled out pretty slowly. The field was small by Elkhorn standards - about 70 guys but only a few teams had more than a couple riders. Second Ascent, the biggest team with 4 guys, initially seemed content to set the tempo. After the first feedzone, the pace slowed a bit. I wanted to be sure I kept my good position and wanted the descent into Union to be safe so I went to the front and rode tempo. Problem is no one would pull through once we started up Catherine Creek. I wasn't going to waste myself to keep the pace high and everyone else had the same thought so we rolled along at 18-19mph most of the way to the base of the first climb. The masters field behind wasn't so kind and with a few miles to the base of the main climb, Candi (our official) rolled up and said she was going to have us neutralize for their field at any moment. No one liked that so Second Ascent went back to work and the climb came quickly.

This climb scares me. I've never gotten over it with the leaders. I was comitted to doing so on Friday, whatever the cost. In the comotion following Candi's warning, I wasn't super attentive and fell from about 5th wheel to mid pack. The climb was hard and there was a split in the group in front of me that I didn't have the opportunity to bridge, but I rolled over the top with a handful of motivated guys and we got into the lead group without much trouble. New territory here. The group swells to about 50 guys by the bottom of the finish climb. The finish climb wasn't all that interesting except that I had a bad moment with about 5k to the top and lost contact. I rolled in solo 1:50 down on the stage winner. I'm not exactly happy about this, the pace was managable and I shouldn't have been dropped. but at the same time, I'm in better position than ever before.

Not much to say about the TT - I was 6th... moved up from 39th on GC to 22nd. I don't feel like I rode as fast as I could have but like the day before, it's my best result at this race and the crit was still to come. Justin Vanhulle won the TT - beat me by 35 seconds - and took the lead overall. I seem to have found a fondness for agressive riding in crits - my legs felt good that afternoon, but the claps of thunder that began about an hour before our scheduled start were rather ominous. The Cat 4 women's crit finished on wet roads while the cat 3 riders are ducking for cover wherever it can be found. Initially we're told our race will be delayed and shortened... then later told it'll be cancelled. Almost immediately the skies clear and the Senior Men get to race. Boo.

While waiting for our start, Spencer Newell, Mike Brown and Cort Buchholz roll by and ask if I'd be willing to try a suicide break on Sunday. How'd they know? That was my plan going into stage 4 last year but the weather shortened stage altered those plans.

To be continued...

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