Tour of the Battenkill 2014 Race Report

April 5th came very early this year. This was the third time I raced the Tour of the Battenkill in Cambridge, NY. It’s always difficult to live and train in the Northeast and still be ready for the first spring races, and this winter was particularly brutal and relentless. Several of my HRRT teammates and I had dedicated several sessions per week together training indoors over the winter with coaching from Madeleine Bonneville and Heather Rizzi, and had gotten out for a few challenging rides on those few occasions when the weather gave us a break, but we were all feeling a mix of excitement and trepidation as the race date approached. The race organizers had added another tough dirt hill into an already very challenging race, too.  It’s called Herrington Hill Rd., and is the nearly vertical line at about mile 45 on the elevation chart below. This year’s was the toughest amateur course I’m aware of in the Tour of the Battenkill’s 10 year history.

I was entered in the Men’s 55+ Cat 5 division along with two of my teammates, Bill Rowe and Jim Litinski. HRRT was well represented in both events this year. Between Saturday’s race and Sunday’s Gran Fondo we fielded approximately 30 people all showing the HRRT colors, and the great support we received from other club members was fantastic. I arrived early on race day, and scouted out some parts of the course that I thought might be tricky due to the snow melt and rain we’d had leading up to race day. The town highway departments had done whatever they could to ensure a safe course, but there’s not a lot you can do with some of the dirt sections. The weather had been predicted to be in the 40s, but even as I hit the start line at noon it was grey and drizzly, the temperatures were dropping into the high 30s, and winds were expected to pick up through the afternoon to at least 25 MPH.

One of the most difficult pre-race decisions was what to wear. I must have had 4 complete outfits to choose from to try to match weather and road conditions! I settled on a pair of winter tights, full-fingered gloves, a long-sleeved base layer top, a light windproof jacket, and my jersey. Though I began to question that choice after the first couple of hard efforts, I was glad to have everything on later in the race when the temperatures dropped and the winds peaked. Other notable elements included a good experience with Sportique’s Warming Up Cream, a subtle but effective embrocation cream, and my first race in my new 2014 Cannondale Cypher helmet in HRRT team colors. I pay it my highest compliment for a helmet: I quickly forgot it was there at all.

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The first few miles of my race were uneventful. One nice thing about racing in an older age group is that while many are highly competitive, we’re also fairly sensible, so we miss much of the craziness that can be seen in open starts in the lower category races. After the neutral start the pace picked up, and by the time we hit the covered bridge it was fairly clear who was going to be leading the pack. I was able to stay with the lead pack through the top of the first dirt climb, the infamous Juniper Swamp Hill Rd. Fairly short, but very steep, this climb is challenging in the best conditions, but this year it was a sign of what was to come: slick mud and ruts covered the road from ditch to ditch. It wasn’t deep, but grabbed enough to make one of the course’s toughest climbs even harder. Worse, there were people here and there walking their bikes up the hill, and a few had hiked them up on their shoulders in cyclocross style and were running up. I was able to stay on the bike and make the climb in good time, but lost a bit of ground to the 5 remaining in the lead group. I hadn’t expected that to happen at this point, and burned a few matches trying to catch them. I came tantalizingly close a couple of times, but couldn’t quite get there alone. I knew that everyone else in our race was well behind me (I later learned from a teammate who was next back that he was at least 5 minutes back at that point), so I had to press on alone in “no man’s land”, hoping that I could keep up a hard enough solo effort to keep from being overtaken in the next 50 miles.

Fueled by a combination of GU-Brew tablets (which I love) dissolved in my water bottles (Polar, of course!), GU Roctane gels, a couple of homemade snacks, and a mind full of sheer determination not to be overtaken, I managed to keep going through some tricky mud and sand sections, seemingly endless steep dirt hills, high headwinds and crosswinds, a sleet storm, and more to reach the finish line in 6th place. It was not the pace I had hoped for, and not the race I had wanted to race, but overall I was pleased with my performance and results.

Paris-Roubaix may have the nickname “Hell of the North,” but this year’s Battenkill was certainly deserving of the same. Still, it was a hell that I was glad to experience again! Thanks to everyone involved in pulling together the Tour of the Battenkill this year, we’re lucky to have a great spring classic in our area. This race is always very well run, and the area’s communities are welcoming. If you’re a racer you won’t regret putting this one on your schedule next year, and with the addition of a Gran Fondo the same weekend there’s a nice opportunity to ride various distances on the same course even if you have no interest in racing. Thanks also for the support from our 2014 HRRT team sponsors. One new sponsor that I’d like to call out specifically is ProGold Biking. In 65 miles of tough, muddy, sandy, wet conditions, my chain performed beautifully, never gritted up, smooth shifting throughout. ProLink has been a longtime favorite chain lube for years, thanks for joining us this year.