Tour of the Depot stage 3 recap

109 miles, + 4,500ft of climbing + 50mph constant wind from south = a very, very hard day in the saddle.

Chad arrived at the start for the last stage today for what was supposed to be a 93 mile race.  There were massive winds from the south at about 50mph that nearly ripped the car door off when Chad got out of the car.  The wind was so bad, in fact, that the race director decided to cut the race short from 93 miles to 76 miles to avoid us echelon-ing across the road on the return leg.

Anyway, the first 20 miles of the race had the wind a pretty much 45 degree angle from the left, meaning the race was strung out and guttered for about an hour.  There were some strong surges and those in the back of the pack in the gutter had some gaps and were dropped pretty quickly.  About 45 minutes into the race, there was a really strong 3-4 minute surge.  I was on the rivet hanging on to the front group of about 15 and the peloton split into 3 groups.  The 2nd group caught up, but Chad was caught out in the back group and did not regain contact.

There were a group of 6 or so up the road and the peloton was shredded from 60 starters to about 30-40 going into the first 8 mile, 1,500ft climb.  I lost contact with the pack about 2 miles from the top and went over the top about a minute back.  Me and two others worked together over the descent and the flats in the headwind for the next 10-15 miles, picked up guys that got popped until our group was about 7-8 and working well together.  We were about 1-2 minutes behind the peloton for about 30 miles and finally caught them before the decisive 1,800ft climb.

Unfortunately, when we caught the peloton, we shortly found out that we missed the turn.  The entire peloton missed one of the 3 turns.  It wasn't a small error either.  We missed the turn by 11 MILES.  So, seeing as hour we tacked about an hour detour and an extra 22 miles, the race was pretty much over.  We all worked together to get home.  I got popped on the big climb early on, but it really didn't matter and I wasn't pushing it, just trying to survive home.  Apparrently, we picked up two other groups of 3-4 each that had missed the other turns!  One group went out to some army depot and we ran into them while they were on some road not even on the map.  The last group we caught said they missed a turn too.

All in all, it was a great workout, but a major sufferfest.  Only 29 of 62 riders finished the race and my cyclometer read 109 miles and 5 1/2 hours.  At the turns everyone missed, there were no signs or course marshalls.  Pretty disappointing, but hey, I finished 23rd overall and if I wasn't so aggressive in the circuit race, I would have finished in the pack and been 17th overall.  The GC time is really a crapshoot because some people did 100+ mile day, some did mid 90 mile day, etc.  Kinda depends on where you went wrong on the cours.  Ah well.  Chad made it most of the way and pretty much to the base of the final climb before packing it in.  We ate some food in town, then left around 3pm from SLC and got back to Boulder around 11pm last night.