Sunday, August 04, 2013

Tour of the Catskills -- Stage Three: RR, the Devil and Thunder

The Devil is waiting... on stage 3. Also known as Platte Clove Road.


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Easy warmup with Ben.

Staging.

Rolling out, nothing really exiting happening on the few easy rollers. Little concern toward the first KOM, but just a little extra throttle did it this time and as far as he can tell the majority of the field stayed together. Maintaining a more front of the pack position most of the time. Fun fast moving. Then that one strait havoc run down hill... and a little counter wall, then fun fast roller coaster all the way to the foot of the Devil. Beyond one short heavy thunder shower, grabbing a third neutral bottle on the way -- nothing particular. Just a fun race so far. Guess what -- every one is awaiting this Platte Clove... also known as Devils Kitchen.

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Yes and sure so it goes. Py positioning more up front slowly to avoid too many stalling riders... Nice climbing, but no way to hang with some of those 20isch year old kids and such, but doing fine. That Mineola rider sitting on Py's wheel... About 1/2 way up the dark sky opened up a 2nd time for good times with heavy rain, a notch of hail, scary lightening and thunder -- well now that's a new addition to the Kitchen climb. Moving up to the KOM point, no one even attempts to pass... and moving on sharing the head wind with just a few, picking up a few more riders... well, that needs a plan to minimize damage at the end in places. Py scouted out while warmup the finish scenario good enough. Even in front, and putting in a good work it seamed to be enough to hurt the guys behind already suffering the Devil -- ha ha, little climb this is...

with even 5km, then 2km to go picking up speed sharing with one (???) a little the move then with one km to go moving up front again and hutting down some (unknown) watts into the last turn uphill to the finish -- at that point giving it all fearing already the usual crowd passing -- so far just two riders attempting to go around -- there is more left in Py guys and in particular as some stupidity just behind noticing crunching sounds gave Py an extra boost >get the hell out of here and finish<... and yepp catching that one guy and almost wheel on wheel with the other. What a fun finish.

 
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http://velocityresults.com/results/464/tour-of-the-catskills-rr2-hunter-ny


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