Teamwork makes all the difference

Before coming to Bend I had spent a lot of time trying to get information about the road race course. Lots of time was spent pouring over Strava data, speaking to guys who had raced Cascade and even getting a copy of a rider's GoPro footage from Cascade. All of that research led me to the conclusion that it was all going to come down to the final climb that ended 5 km from the finish. Here is the Strava segment. Larry and I had discussed the race on several occasions and felt that our tactic would be to make sure that nobody got away without somebody from our team and to set a hard tempo up to the final climb. At that point it would be up to me to basically try to ride everybody off my wheel.

Teamwork was going to be very important to our race. Even before the race started Larry loaned me his front Zipp 404 as mine got smashed in my crash and had not been replaced yet. It's cold at 6,000' at 8am and with 20 miles of descending to start we were pretty bundled up. Once we started warming up I took off my wind jacket and stuffed it under my jersey so that I could dump it at the first feed. Larry came up and took it from me so that I wouldn't have to deal with it. Teamwork. Then riders started attacking and Don and Larry took turns covering and chasing people down as appropriate. More teamwork.

After the 2nd feed the race really started as we hit the hills. Larry and Don continued to take turns keeping the race under control. Don covered the last break over the second to last climb and then Larry took over to drive the field and close most of the gap to the break as we hit the bottom of "the climb". Not just teamwork, but total self-sacrifice.

As we got to that final climb I was thinking about a lot of things. I was thinking about how much my legs hurt after the previous day's TT. I was thinking about my rivals who were looking really strong. Including the Boulder Orthopedics guys who I was convinced were letting us do all the work so that they could unleash at the end. I was also thinking that, wow, Don and Larry have done a ton of work to put me in a position to possibly win this race. They were throwing their races away to help me and I did not want to let them down. Yes, I was hurting a bit and yes, my confidence was not at its absolute peak, but my team had done their job and now it was up to me. It is great to be able to sit in like a princess while your team does all the work, but with that comes the responsibility to deliver. There would be no giving up, no excuses. It was time to put up or shut up.

I made my move and got my gap. With a lot of suffering on my part and a bit of “you go. NO, YOU go” in the chasing group behind I held on to win. As I was suffering on that climb I was thinking about what teammate Jason Walker said about making this move. He believed that I could pull this off and that helped.

It felt good to win. It felt good to have teammates who were willing to throw everything that they had into a race to help me win. It felt good to repay their hard work and confidence. But this is what we do. We are focused on somebody from Team Specialized winning the race. It doesn't matter who it is. We throw our lot in behind the rider who we think has the best chance. Just ask defending National Criterium Champion Dean LaBerge who gladly gave his race away to protect teammate Jason Walker as he crushed the field to win solo and take Dean's title for 2012. Dean's comment about that? He had fun thwarting the chase. That is team work. That is how we roll on Team Specialized.