Back at GMSR. Wonderful mountains, wonderful scenery. I got about the same result as last year 5th overall and 4th in the road race. Last year, this result seemed pretty decent, but after a 2nd year of racing, well not so great. On the positive side, I did make it through another race safely and had a good although not excellent run up the mountain. General sights.
One lady who finished back a few places had underestimated the difficulty of climbing App Gap and chose her gearing poorly. She ended up running the bike through the finish. Even with that, she beat 23 competitors so she may be one to watch for next year.
Anna McCloon had a fantastic race, finishing with the sprint jersey and crit win. She had a very good improvement on her TT time and enjoyed taking the yellow jersey in the circuit race.
I continue to have a great respect for Ann Marie Miller, previous race winner who gave a very good showing in both the climb and crit races. The overall winner of the race is a mountain biker who is super fit. It was fun trying to keep up with her on the climbs.
I made the unfortunate choice to watch the finish of the Cat 3 circuit race and witnessed (from a distance) a smash up in the sprint. One bike frame was dramatically broken in 2 places and the rider hurled it to the side of the road with a stream of curses in French. Our road race was stopped for quite a while on the descent of Brandon Gap while paramedics attended to a male rider that had gone off the road. That looked to be a VERY BAD place to go down. I count my good fortune that I have not broken anything yet this year.
http://picasaweb.google.com/TripleP/090906GMSRRoadRace#5379554789303146754
Click here for my chalked encouragement and photos of climbers and chalkers. The photo on the left above is of one of the men's fields in the crit. I like the lonely aspects of that photo. Riders, a lot of pavement, and an incline. The race actually did have a lot of spectators and felt more like the blurry photo on the right.
