MERCO Cycling Classic, Stage 1: MID Road Race

Well, there was one thing on my mind the whole morning, it was the comment in Hernando talking about Stage 1. "doesn’t look that intimidating, but lap after lap up the circuit’s climb will see riders suffering under a painful barrage of high watts and razor sharp accelerations." The words "razor sharp acelerations" stuck in my head.  We drove to the course start, got all signed in and what not, and about an hour before the start Bissell pulls up with their huge red and black vans with the red bikes on top all fancy and uniform.  Other teams were there that were ones that I'd only heard of in the magazines or from other cyclists, but never did I think I'd be doing a race against them.  That was also something that was mentioned, the beauty of this sport that I could work my way up to Category 2 and show up on the starting line just like the rest of these people.  Except, the rest of these people have been at it much longer, for some it could have been their 100th P1/2 start, or their 6th season.  Heck, they could be Olympic champions! Nonetheless, here I was at the start line with Dave and Jeff, literally in the front.  We started lining up first and eventually there was 100+ riders behind us, with Yahoo!'s team behind us, some Bissell riders and then more behind us. 

From the get go Jeff takes off on some Yahoo!'s wheel, and I enjoyed riding shoulder to shoulder with all these racers.  It was awesome for about 6 miles, responding to the sharp accelerations as we took up the entire road.  

Then, wham, we made a left turn and enjoyed a long climb up a hill where basically the better riders rode away from the rest of the riders, and by the time I made it up the hill I was already fighting to catch up with the other groups that had formed.  The problem was, our numbers didn't match the numbers of those chasing the leaders.  Basically, I spent the rest of the 6 laps going full bore trying to catch up to the groups of riders ahead of us. So much work, and the hill was actually the one place where things slowed down.  The entire 86 miles of the race was brutal.  I was on the verge of cramping up the entire last lap.  Jeff did cramp, and I was with him for the majority of the race.  Dave was up there somewhere I never saw him again.  
The finish of the race was on a different road, so I had no clue what to expect.  At that point I was cramping all over, putting hardly any pressure on the pedals.  All in all, I finished the race at about 4 hrs, at the top of this hill near the dam there.  We found out while crossing the line that there was NO time cut today.  So, having worked my tail off trying to make this "time cut" I find out that it wasn't even effective today!  They said it was because the race blew apart so fast that the time cut wasn't fair.  Oh well, I finished the race.  On my way back (yes we had to ride back from the finish like 4 miles) I stumbled upon Alexi Grewal who was at today's race.  To understand the significance of this, read this: http://www.elpasotimes.com/sports/ci_17507613
I was asking him how he felt about today, and he indicated that he wasn't too satisfied with his legs today, but did mention that he felt great last weekend! Haha, I thought it was amusing to talk to him and it's cool to see him back at it at age 50!  Today has been a long and hard day, but the racing was great. Lots to learn, and a great experience.  We ate so much food after the race, and Jeff was clearly hungry because on the drive back into Merced he started talking about all these types of food, the entire topic was about food! Classic. We enjoyed some Mexican food in town and now I'm about to go to bed.  I have NEVER gone to bed at 8 before in my life, maybe once when I was told to go to bed early for punishment, but having been punished today in the race, I think I'll enjoy the extra sleep.  Here are a few misc. photos from today.

Official stage one results: 

Albrecht, 34th and 8'00'' gap.

Ferretti, 99th and 33'46'' gap.

Galland, 106th and 43'39'' gap. 

Here is the map results for today's race: 

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/184734

And, I forgot to mention the success of Lindsay Meyers, taking 6th in the Women's P/1/2/3!  And, we can't forget about Maggie today, she rode hard in the Women's P/1/2/3 as well taking 46th. Nice work ladies. 

Tomorrow's TT will be interesting! Planning on giving it 110% and seeing where the numbers end up.. I'll save all that number crunching for the experts, but I do know that making the time cut will be interesting!  Man, I do hope my legs recover a bit by tomorrow.  Time for sleep!