Tour of the Gila – Stage 2

April 29th, 2011 | by Taylor Jung | Elite Team

 I finished yesterday’s post with a hopeful plan to contest the finish of the race today.  I couldn’t have been proven more wrong.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  The stage today called for 77.9 miles including 3 categorized climbs, though none of them as difficult or as long as the final climb yesterday.  My hope was that yesterday’s stage would deaden the legs of the climbers a bit and the pace uphill today would be more reasonable for a guy like me.  As I mentioned earlier, i was wrong.  The leader of the race (who spent the whole day in the break away yesterday and still put time into the field on the final climb) seemed hell-bent on not letting a single person get away today.  The pace was fast from the start and only got faster as we entered the first climb.  I managed to make it 1.5 km from the summit of the first climb before falling off the back and facing a long ride alone.  Luckily, I caught up with a nice chap from Pittsburgh and we negotiated the much feared descent to Sapillo Creek safely.  This is one of the more dangerous descents I have ever negotiated with many steep switchbacks, one of which even took a life several years ago.  We picked up a few more guys on the way to the finish and ultimately conceded 23 minutes to the winner.  Naturally the strong guys maintained their positions and cleaned my clock.  Someone email me if you remember the reason that I decided I should upgrade to Cat2.  Adam fought hard on the stage to chase back on after being gapped on the descent to Sapillo Creek and then ran out of gas in the final miles to finish 3 minutes back.  I have included a couple of photos I found.  One is of my little group of stragglers from today (I am the one in the front) and the second is of Adam immediately after the finish of Stage 1 on Mogollon.  I don’t know that exhausted quite describes it. So today was a big flop.  I found out that I am in over me head worse than I thought.  Tomorrow is the time trial (everyone races individually against the clock) and since I possess no particular ability in this arena, I will ride it at a medium pace and save my legs for the criterium on Saturday.  It is being broadcast live on Velonews.com so check in tomorrow for the details.  Off to bed!