Ronde Van Stony

2010 Mileage: 4171
I actually won something! And you can't go wrong with beer and ice cream (the gift certificate is nice too but its to a different shop so I feel a little weird about it).

The race was a blast and I placed first in Men's Sport age 20-29 and second in the sport category overall. I was really happy with the way that I rode. I pushed myself to my limits and was riding on will power alone at times but it felt great. I ended the race completely exhausted but with an average pace of just over 21mph for the 36 miles (not 33.5 like advertised) of dirt roads and two track I should have expected to be.

I'm not sure I know how to write a true race report because it all seemed to fly by so quick. It started off with a fairly easy mass start roll out behind a motorcycle on paved roads. This was nice because I didn't get much of a warm up so this made up for that. I made my way up to the front of the sport group (they separated us at the line) during the roll out and then when they let us go at the two-track I really hit it hard and started passing every chance I could. By the time we exited and were out on to dirt roads I realized I had passed just about everyone I could and could see one group (followed closely behind by a solo rider) off in the distance. This was still really early in the race and my legs were feeling the effort to make my way through the group but I knew that if I could just get up there I would be able to sit in and get some rest. I pushed myself close to my limits here and caught the solo rider, a nice guy named Tom, who told me he didn't have anything in him to catch the group so I continued my effort as he grabbed my wheel and we clawed our way up. Once we caught that group it was all a blur of dirt roads and turns at the front. The miles seemed to fly by at this point and I was amazed with both our pace and how well my legs felt. We even managed to grow our group as we reeled more riders in and avoided anyone coming up from behind. Then as we neared the end we headed back in to some more two-track and this was the only place that a cyclocross bike was not the ideal bike for this race. I was washing out through a lot of the corners due to the lose gravel and struggling to keep up. I felt cramps coming on a couple times but managed to fight them off. Our group split in this section as it seemed lots of people were having the same problem I was and I even saw a couple crashes. I chased the front group (front of the group I was riding with not front of the race) but couldn't quite catch them through the single track as I fought off cramping. As we headed back out on to the road I made up some ground but I couldn't quite catch them as I crossed the finish line solo. I rolled in for 29th in the overall (out of 118 finishers) and I was really happy with my performance and pain tolerance for 1:44:40. Full results are posted here.

The cross bike worked great and even with all the abuse it took I was amazed that I didn't have any mechanicals at all and the wheels even stayed true. I also was pleasantly surprised about the beer from Kuhnhenn Brewery. I won a growler of the Simcoe Silly and it was delicious.

Next race on the schedule is Peak2Peak up north at Crystal Mountain.