Nate, Nate's girlfriend Allie and I left Truckee around 9am on Monday morning for our 20 hour drive to Silver City, New Mexico. We would have been able to leave 3 hours earlier, except we didn't anticipate the brain-buster of trying to fit 5 bikes, 12 spare wheels, bags of clothing, food and 3 people into our borrowed Ford Excursion. At the last minute we had to source a hitch-mounted bike rack and a cargo box for the roof to fit all of our crap. Getting the hitch rack installed required waking up a neighbor to plasma cut off the lock on our hitch. It was a miracle we were able to leave as early as we did and we couldn't have done it without help from Ross, Errol and my Dad.
Along the way to New Mexico we stopped on an empty highway north of Vegas to motorpace behind the Excursion. It was Allies first time driving as a motorpacer, but after a few confusing minutes with her driving a mile ahead without any cyclist in tow, she figured it out and did a great job.
We acquired last minute host housing in Silver City, and were placed in a pre-furnished, for-sale house – with no residents! So we got all the benefits of host housing without the hassle of actual hosts. Aside from the smell of rank cat piss and sticker thorns all over the carpet, the place was pretty nice.
Silver City to Mogollon Road Race - 73.1 miles, 5700' climbing
This race was a point to point, with rolling flats ending atop a final 6.7 mile, 2100' climb. All I did the entire race prior to final climb was sit-in, eat and drink. My heart-rate averaged around 130 bpm for the first 60 miles of the race. I wanted to be as fresh as possible for the climb, as that is where all the time gaps would happen. This also gave me the opportunity to size-up the rest of the field, as we racing against all new faces from Colorado and Arizona.
Allie was our race support for the week, so she stationed herself at each feedzone for bottle and food handups. There was some confusion at the first feedzone as I was yelling "BOTTLE BOTTLE!" but had a mussette bag aimed at me instead. I desperately tried to reach in farther for the bottle in her lower hand, but I ended up missing the grab of either. But at the slow pace the field was rolling, I was fine until the next feedzone.
As the final climb started I moved to the front and hung with the leaders with about 3 miles to go. With my heartrate maxed, my legs slowly started to fade and I had to drop off their pace. I never felt like I blew up or was crawling, I just wasn't able to hold their speed and rolled in 20th for the day. 2:30 behind the leader. Nate finished 16th, 2:00 off.
We were both extremely optimistic about our results and were certain we could makeup time throughout the rest of the race.
