July 29th
Riders: Eric Schildge, Nick Keough, Alister Ratcliff along with former teamate Toby Marzot
Written By: Alister Ratcliff
14th place -- Alister Ratcliff
After a rough week at Cascade, Nick, Eric, and myself knew that we needed to have a strong showing today to get the whole team motivated for the week. The U23 race at nationals isn't as deep of a field as the Elite race but it has several key riders to play off of and they are almost always in the right move. We knew we needed to key off of the Garmin riders and the Trek Livestrong riders along with a few other strong men.
Nick followed a few early moves and Eric followed suit shortly after. About halfway through the first lap, a group of 8 got off the front with 2 garmin riders and 3 trek livestrong riders. I knew this could be the move that the field would just let go so i bridged with Peter Salon, Nick Bax, and Scott Stewart near the end of the first lap. Luckily i had made the right choice because now with 3 garmin riders, 3 Trek Livestrong riders, Waste Management, and Kelly Benefits all represented in the break, nobody was to bring the break back. We started rolling through in a nice paceline, everybody taking their pulls. I was surprised to see everyone taking as many pulls as they were, maybe a little too surprised and possibly this is what made me take more pulls then I should have but you can always say that after the race.
At the end of the 3rd lap, the break was up to a 5 minute lead and i was fairly certain that this was to be the winning break with the riders that were in it. I should have started to sit on a little more but once again i didn't really see anybody skipping out on their turns. I continued to grab as many bottles as possible through the feed zone and also through Jacob Keough (Nick's older brother racing with Kelly Benefits) who helped me out big time with his dad following in the team car.
The second to last time up the feed zone climb all 3 of the Garmin riders attacked from the back of the group and i jumped straight onto the train only i could not hold their wheels for long enough and blew up big time halfways up the first part of the hill. I began cramping at the wrong part of the race because i hadn't fueled properly and that the heat and the race were taking a huge toll on my body. Just my luck for this to be happening now when the real race was being played out up the road. I tried as much as possible to recover and then pace myself to the finish. I rode in with Jacob Keough from Kelly Benefits, Julian Kyer, and Nick Bax. Great experience for next years U23 race where i will be a senior to the event and can hopefully better my performance from today.
