I’ve been hesitant to say anything about this race, which begins Wednesday and finishes on Sunday, partly because last week I thought I might have to not bother going as I was fighting a bit of a sore throat, and was thinking it was hopeless. However, after taking most of the week easily, it seems the cold symptoms disappeared, although I currently have a sore throat for a different reason, namely after swallowing something sharp during a meal yesterday that seems to have cut my throat a little.
For a race of this caliber it’s absolutely crucial to be healthy and in peak form just to be able to hang in there, let alone consider any decent result. My objective is simply to finish within the daily time-cuts, which I think is within about 9 or 10 percent of the winning time. This is fairly generous, but if you get popped off the back of a pack going 50km/hr and you can only hold 40 on your own, you’ll lose more than 10% in a really big hurry.
The Cascade Classic is a six-stage race over 5 days, with 4 road races each about 130-140 km, one criterium and one time-trial. I’d recently received an upgrade to race category 1, so I’m racing in the Pro/1 race, meaning I’ll be riding among several continental pro teams like Health Net, Garmin-Chopitle, Rock Racing, Bissel Pro, and Toyota-United. Garmin-Chipotle has sent their best riders to the Tour de France, but there is a lot of depth on the team, and they have also sent a team to the Cascade Classic, including Tom Danielson, who raced the Tour last year as well. Rock Racing sports riders like Santiago Botero, whom I believe has won stages in the Tour de France, while Levi Leipheimer (4th or 5th in last year’s Tour, I believe) and Chris Horner from team Astana are racing, after Astana was not invited to this year’s Tour. So, there is going to be a lot of attention focussed on this race this year.
There are 154 riders registered, and it appears to me the strongest teams are those I’ve named, which means there will be several others that I think will be at about my level. So, as intimidating as it is to see the start list and as hard as the race will be, I have to believe at this point that I have sufficient fitness to ride with groups who will finish each stage within the time cuts. The stages are shorter this year, for some reason (I speculate there has been a trend to shortening races, as longer races tend to encourage drug use), which is to my benefit, and the large number of riders should also be helpful, as long as I don’t end up in groups unwilling to chase. I completed this race in about 1999 and survived it quite well among essentially equally strong teams, although the total number of riders was lower that year, I’m fairly certain.
Among Canadians competing, I see Cam Evans and Will Routley from Symmetrics are registered (only Symmetrics guys, I believe the rest are doing the Tour de Delta), Dominque Rollin on Toyota-United, and Trevor Connor. There may be others whose names I don’t recognize.
In any event, I leave Tuesday morning on the 6:10 Coho and will arrive in Bend in the mid afternoon – just enough time to sign-in, go for a short spin to loosen my legs, and to find my housing hosts. I hope to keep my blog updated as to my progress.
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July 9th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Good luck Hugh!! Pull off a good one.