Tour de Hills

Tour de Hills
Cat ¾
Ryan Toedebusch
Harrison Arkansas
April 18, 2015

I made my way south to the Ozarks for my 2nd go at the Tour de Hills road race. Last year I raced as a cat 5 and ended up getting 2nd to Zach Cobb from SBC-racing. Coming back as a 3 and racing the ¾’s, I was hoping for stiffer competition and a large field. The weather was not looking good with clouds and rain in the forecast. Seems this may have scared away many riders for there was only 16 in my category.

The course is deemed the Jasper disaster, in reference to the 3 major climbs that it contains and Jasper is the town where the climbing fun begins. 10:10 am start and it looked like the weather would hold, at least for the start. The first 20 miles out of Harrison were flat and I used these to warm up the legs since I was late to register. I pulled to the front for a few miles and opened up the fuel lines (ie: capillaries). Hit the first climb, Pruit climb (1.2 miles 6.2%avg) and (what felt like to me) screamed up it with the pack of ~30 still intact (cat ¾ started with Masters). This was just enough to open the legs up before Mt. Sherman climb (3.2 miles 7.1%avg). This climb started hard and quickly there were only 6 of us left. One dude from Panda Racing Dev got up the road and stayed away until the finish to win. I narrowly hung on for the duration of this climb. I was dropped but never lost sight of the group and fought like hell to regroup just before the dope and bomber descent that was to come. I find these moments in racing to be very rewarding. I take opportunities like this to really test myself – mostly mentally. I didn’t want to lose sight of them, my legs were telling me otherwise but I rode my pace and my tempo and was able to latch back up before the descent – cool!

Since the ¾ cat started with Masters – we had these guys intermingled with us, which made keeping track of bib numbers important for me. I was 3rd/4th on the road at all times after the first climb. Coming down from Mt. Sherman I took some moments to slam some calories before the real descending started. The last climb was Ponca (2.7 miles 7.5%avg) and I recall this one hurting last year. Awesomely for me this year, while it was painful, it was over much faster than I remembered, with mostly uneventful riding up with a group of 4 riders. Now that the deciding terrain was out of the way, I just had to hold off a few chasing riders in my race to secure a podium spot.

The last 20 miles were false flats and some more bomber descents. I worked hard with 3 riders, 2 were masters and one dude was in my cat, who had bridged back up after Ponca. He told me that he was 2nd last year in the ¾, so I knew he was capable. He was cramping and asked to get pulled in but wouldn’t contest me for 3rd. Being a skeptic – I wasn’t sure, dude seemed nice but I didn’t take any chances. These last miles I was teetering on full-gassed and as we pulled into town, I made sure to save enough juice to out sprint my guy, even if he made a truce. I was able to outsprint both Masters guys and the other cat ¾ to get my last spot on the podium. All in all – great day of racing and it was great prep for Joe Martin this weekend. I have to say that this race is legit and suits me well.

Thanks SBR Quantum Racing and all of our sponsors.