Purgatory Road Race, Cat 3

I agree with Dave that this race was extremely well done. Plenty of parking. Registration was smooth. There was full support on the race course, including water in the follow car. There were officials on motorcycles giving us updates on time gaps to the break. The roads were relatively smooth (just a few rough patches on the long descent). There was even a guy driving around the parking lot before the start, explaining that the later races would be delayed by 30 minutes because of a crash. In fact, that’s the only thing I noticed amiss: that the race-times for the fields that started late included the 30 minute delay time—essentially irrelevant. Green Line Velo did a fantastic job!

I loved the course, which started with a few miles of mostly descent, followed by rolling terrain before a 1km climb up to a false flat section that led in to the finish. Every time up the climb, the lead group would shed riders, but many of them would catch back on during the long descent. After the third time up the climb (out of five), the lead group was down to about 10 or 12 guys, and I was hoping that it would stay that way. By the time we ended the descent, though, the group was much larger. In retrospect (after finishing 19th), I should have gone to the front and pushed the descent on lap three to try to keep the lead group out of sight of the chasers. This occurred to me at the time, but I had given everything just to be in that group. I was concerned that I was going to get dropped the 4th trip up to the finish if I didn’t conserve, so I just sat in. No moxie!

Course note: I think the false flat at the top of the climb made the course somewhat more challenging than some other hilly races. Instead of riding your own pace on the climb and catching up during the descent if necessary, you had to be with a group at the apex so that you could be part of the group driving the pace and benefitting from the presence of others on the false flat section.

Because of this concern, I was second wheel heading into the penultimate climb. I drifted back a few riders but was still with the lead group at the top. At this point, a guy took off solo. I thought we would catch him, but we didn’t.

Going into the final climb, I was about 10th, but—just like Sunapee—I got passed instead of doing the passing and finished 19th out of 50 starters (32 finishers). I am happy that I’ve been able to be in good position at the end, but since it’s taking all of my energy to get there, I’ve got nothing left to punch for the finish. Need more racing in my legs.