Jon called in yesterday with his Tour of the Gila race report from the Groove Subaru Cycling Team perspective. Yesterday's stage, the Mogollon, was 150 kilometers with a mountain top finish on a Category One climb. Category One = steep or long, in this case very steep. After Stage One, Jon's about 2 minutes off of the leader Levi Leipheimer and only 16 seconds off of Lance Armstrong. Jon probably did not intend for me to blog this, but he said he couldn't ride too close to Lance lest the Fan Boy fever take over. Ok, he didn't exactly say it like that but he did say it was distracting. So maybe he gave Lance 16 seconds on purpose? Haha.
Jon is at the Gila with Groove Subaru teammates Zach Davies and Chuck Coyle, as well as Greg Krause who was snubbed by the USCF upgrade people by not counting his ACA points. So it goes. Krause is racing cat 2 but I am sure he would have been in the mix had he been allowed to race yesterday. So without Krause they are a team of three for the Gila.
Chuck kept the team out of the crosswind danger zone by hauling the them toward the front of the pack, staving off the fate of being guttered out of the race. Then, right at the start of the climb, Zach did tremendous work to position Jon near the top 10. After that Jon said he just kept steady on the climb, falling back a bit at one point but then chugging past a lot of people toward the end to finish 27th.
Today's stage is the Inner Loop Road Race at Fort Bayard, and they are probably about halfway through the 130 kilometers as I type this, perhaps gearing up for the final Category 3 climb of the day (there are three of those today). The race finishes over about 10k of descending then flat terrain. Looking forward to hearing how the team did and posting it here.
Jon is at the Gila with Groove Subaru teammates Zach Davies and Chuck Coyle, as well as Greg Krause who was snubbed by the USCF upgrade people by not counting his ACA points. So it goes. Krause is racing cat 2 but I am sure he would have been in the mix had he been allowed to race yesterday. So without Krause they are a team of three for the Gila.
Chuck kept the team out of the crosswind danger zone by hauling the them toward the front of the pack, staving off the fate of being guttered out of the race. Then, right at the start of the climb, Zach did tremendous work to position Jon near the top 10. After that Jon said he just kept steady on the climb, falling back a bit at one point but then chugging past a lot of people toward the end to finish 27th.
Today's stage is the Inner Loop Road Race at Fort Bayard, and they are probably about halfway through the 130 kilometers as I type this, perhaps gearing up for the final Category 3 climb of the day (there are three of those today). The race finishes over about 10k of descending then flat terrain. Looking forward to hearing how the team did and posting it here.
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