Banff Bike Fest was a great learning experience consisting of 5 stages being a Prologue, 90km road race, 21km Time Trial, 50 lap criterium & 144km road race to finish it off.
The goal was to finish the stage race with an overall placing.
The prologue I once again failed to get an adequate warm up & hit the beginning stretch way too hard. Ended up with lactic acid overload before the hill even began. Definitely will plan accordingly next year.
The 90km 1a sprint the next day was pretty standard. Not having raced this before I thought there may be a chance for separation on the only "somewhat significant" hill before the turn around. Nick J with pedalhead was already up the road solo & I decided to get to the front to see who may attack. Warren M & Josh K were near the front looking frisky so I thought they wanted to jam & I went. I bridge to Nick J before the end of the hill & beginning the descent. We hit the turn around & had a climb immediately afterwards. I wasn't able to recover quickly enough to keep the pace with Nick & looked behind to see the peloton not having any of it. We re integrated but I still wanted to give it a go some more. I went with a few riders here and there whom I thought collectively we could have a shot at staying away. Everything got reeled in & RMCC did a perfect lead out for there man to take the win. After all the attacks I was happy with my mid/back pack placing.
The time trial was the next day & my legs paid for the attacks the previous day. Could never get on top of the pedals and feel in charge of the bike therefore struggled the entire duration of the TT.
The criterium was later in the evening & I really wanted to survive this. My weaknesses in the crits are definitely taking the corners without grabbing any brakes. Watching these guys elbow eachother for positioning leading into the corners and taking the corner almost at cruising flat speed without grabbing brakes was very impressive and intimidating at the same time. I was trying to hang on through the first half & started to feel good with about 15 to go. For a very small period of time I thought I actually had a shot at doing something so I moved up. At one point I moved up to 5th place behind 3 garneau evolution riders and Nick J with pedalhead.
I figured I had to stay here in order to have a shot at any sprint contest but did not have the cornering skills. I braked less and less each turn but still inevitably had to brake to save my ass from crashing through the barriers. Touching the brakes in the corners moved me from 5th to 30th in 2 turns which was frustrating. I definitely have to work on this as I race with the stronger more technically skilled riders that brake very little therefore conserving energy & minimizing the acceleration requirements each turn. I was able to finish mid pack & was happy to have a reasonable gc placing so far.
The road race I figured things would get absolutely shredded. 11 laps around tunnel mountain would tax all the riders legs for sure. Kris Dahl had GC lead going into the final road race as he crushed the prologue & TT. H & R were looking after things reasonably well minimizing threats up the road until Craig jones started to fatigue from the domestique work. I tried jumping on the back of attacking trains about 3-5 times during the race thinking I had a shot at staying away. One of the attacks that was the most dangerous was when we had about 6 riders at the bottom of the descent including Kris Dahl with a 5-10 sec gap ahead of the peloton. Unfortunately it was too early & maybe not the right team mix to get away. Later in the race a good mix of RMCC/ERTC/ROAD/H&R/Independent approx 6 riders got away & put time into us. The peloton obviously didn't chase smart but instead there were constant surges & lulls which only caused the gap to the chase group to go up. I ended up finishing on the tail end of the main peloton after not having enough jam to get over the punchy roller before the descent to the finish. Definitely need to work on my 3-5 minute power as that punchy roller proved the most difficult to get over each of the 11 laps.
With the break staying away the GC shuffled and Aaron Schooler with H&R won the overall. Congrats to him & his team for taking the win.
My teammate Evan Bayer was busy kicking ass like he has all year. He won his first cat 5 race in Velocity & won in Pigeon Lake in cat 4. He then kicked ass at Banff Bike Fest winning overall in GC for cat 4. Pretty stoked to have a strong teammate moving up very fast.
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