First Annual - Deschutes TT Festival (stage race)

Ever been to TT Stage Race? Up until this weekend I had no idea how much fun/adventure could be crammed into just two days. The Deschutes TT Festival, consisted off three stages all based out of Maupin, OR, a sleepy fishing, rafting, and now cycling town in north eastern Oregon. The stages started off early on Saturday with a punishing 40 KM, followed up by 8 mile hill climb later that afternoon and finally concluded with a 50 mile out and back Sunday.

- Stage 1 -

Going into the first 40 KM event I felt good. I was nervous about the first few miles as the TT started with a significant 2 mile climb, but after that I couldn’t have asked for a better course. With my minute man off, promoter, RAAM Veteran, and all around cool guy, George Thomas, held the bike. I snapped in. Put some pressure into the pedals, and was off. Now, I’m not a climber, but that morning I felt like this 180 lb beef cake could have shelled the lightest Columbian. By the top of the climb, I’d pulled back my 30, 90, and 120 second carrots, and was closing in on my 60 second carrot. At the top of the climb with a good 22 miles still left, I settled down, and began to cruise, and chased my 60 second man, Carl, into the descent. Carl descended just a tad more aggressively and by the base of the climb had increased our gap a little. I eased forward, found the nose of the saddle, began to put some power into the pedals, and then the saddle rocked forward! I moved back and it rocked back. The weld holding the top of frame on had broken, and the sleeve holding the seat post was just floating free! With the saddle just hanging there, I didn’t think I should sit on it, and I was worried if I just left it dangling there it might fall into my rear wheel and catastrophically end it all. So with that I slammed on the breaks depositing the saddle, seat post, severed frame sleeve on the side of the road, and resumed the chase with 23 KM left. Without the saddle, the aero bars weren’t an option makeing the shifters inaccessible. The bike had now been reduced to a high power low cadence single speed. A few miles later I hit my first decent and found that while I couldn’t pedal due to the loss of pedal tension, I could now tuck real low. The final decent of the course was less kind, it consisted of a few corners which were quite a challange sans saddle. In the final KM my hands and wrists began to hurt. Bringing it in I was passed by a few 1-2’s and two of my carrots. Crossing the line I’d salvaged 3^rd place, 3 min down on the leaders. Carl, my 60 second man, took second only being denied 1^st by 3 seconds. As bad as my luck had been it could have been worse, my good friend, Ben, had suffered a flat ending his chase for GC.

- Stage 2 –

Stage 1 had started at roughly 9:00 and with stage 2, an 8 mile hill climb set for 3:00 the plan had been to eat a nice lunch, take a nap, before warming up. The events of stage 1 changed all that. The whole rest and relaxation period was pulled from the schedule and replaced by a crazy fast attempt to salvage the TT fest by setting my road bike as some sort of bastardized TT weapon. Cranks were swapped, cassettes and wheels were changed, saddle height adjusted, etc. With a little over an hour left before the start of the second stage everything was as good as it was going to get and it was time to get ready. The hill climb started out steep, and then after a few corners turned into a power climb with a serious side wind. Hill climbs definitely aren’t my thing, but given everything else that had happened that day I felt thankfull to hold 3^rd place. A climber catapulted himself into second position, putting over a minute on the rest of the field, and first place ever so slightly increased his gap. Carl, who had been sitting in 2^nd position, suffered the serious misfortune of suffering the next bout of equipment failure loosing a crank arm not long after he had left the line, ending his chase for GC.

- Stage 3 -

Sunday Morning, I was sitting in third place, with a little over three minute’s separating myself from GC. With Carl and Ben both out of the chase for GC, both offered up TT equipment to try and give me some sort of aero setup to do the final TT on. I took Ben up on the offer and rolled up to the start with some borrowed clip on aero-bars. The final stage was a 50 mile out and back on the notoriously difficult bake oven road. The first 2 miles of bake oven are fairly gnarly but after that the climb settles down into a power climb. I was being chased by the Cat 4 climbing phenom. Right before reaching the summit of the initial two mile section I had the honor of seeing him fly by. Once the climb had settled down into something more reasonable, I returned the favor and went on to put a little less then 4 min into him, and 9 min into first, grabbing a stage win and cat 4 stage race GC!