Cypress

A beautiful day in Rapelje, Montana for one of the hardest races in the state.

My Dad and his g/f picked me up saturday afternoon to travel the 2 hours to an almost non-existent town. We set up camp and I rode around opening up for the next days race. The drive into town (the only paved road) had confirmed my suspicions that this race was going to be won by a strong rider and not someone that sits in and wins it at the line.

You may have seen this before:


An altimeter on a friends bike recorded roughly 4000' vert for the 47 mile race.

Here is downtown Rapelje. Notice the guns in the truck window. Do I hear banjos?


The post office. Methinks the trailer behind it houses the only mailman for 50 miles.


RACE TIME. I wake up at 6:30, plow down some oatmeal and wake myself up by walking around. Warm up after racer's meeting. Sometime around 10 am we go off. Over the first few sets of rollers we go, avoiding dead gophers aplenty. At the bottom of the first BIG hill I find myself mid/back of the pack so I decide I had better get up front to ward off any attacks...DOH! Three guys are already off! I lay down some wrath and catch up passing two GAS/Heritage Homes riders and a YVCC rider. Jason from the GAS team yells up to me "Ease it up, Cypress, there is a LOT of race left". I kick it down and get in the group.

Here is a shot of the break:


I'll give you one guess as to which rider is me...


After the hill, three more guys caught on and we had a paceline. The HUGE hill dropped one of those guys. We all worked a neat paceline to the turnaround then the steep hills came. We lost another rider when the grade got somewhere around 12%. Without knowing it, I dropped the group and had to slow down for them to catch back on. To give some idea of how steep it was, I dropped the group at a scorching 8 mph . As a testament to my descending skills, I dropped the group again going down a 1.5 mile long 7%, and had to wait for them at the bottom.

The top of the HUGE hill. Note the angle of the power lines:


A nice echelon most of the ways back towards the finish line kept us ahead of the pack. At mile 3, the two GAS guys had been "chatting" with each other and had never taken the chain off of the big ring going up short 6% hills. Then it began. Jason and Eric (GAS) started throwing attacks. Jason went first, then as soon as we (I) reeled him back in, Eric would go. This is very tiring to Cypress. Their tactics were working and bringing the cramps down hard on my legs. I watched them a little closer from there. 3 attacks a piece and I decided to stick on Jason's wheel like white on rice on a paper plate in a snowstorm at a KKK BBQ. I figured he was the stronger rider.

Jason goes, I go with him, Jesse who had been doing well went with. Eric is toast. Jason weaves around almost losing me in the process. He looks back and I smile at him with big pearly whites. He realizes that he isn't going anywhere without me, and moves to the back to conserve himself for the sprint. We had passed the 1k sign during Jason's hellish efforts. I look back and notice that Jason is behind Jesse and Jesse is slipping a little bit. A head/cross wind is hurting him and he isn't getting much of a draft off of me, sooooo, guess what Cypress does... I move onto the white line and take off. Here is the result:


Pointing at my Dad right before I cross the line 8 seconds in front of 2nd place.


Stats:
Distance: 47miles
Time: 2 hours 9 mins
Max speed: 48.7 mph
Placing: 1st

On a side note, The USCF official took notice that I was still cat5. Cypress is now a cat4 after 3 USCF sanctioned races this season and 5 total over the last 2 years. I'm in the money now!

Cromulent

Wow!! You are crushing the souls and making the road widows. Nice, nice work.

sverrefehn

Awesome report. It's not often that you get them with a photo essay to complete the picture of domination.
Congrats on getting that upgrade too. Nothing like some consistent throwing down to get moved up early. Welcome to Cat 4-dum. I got my upgrade back in March and have been working my tail off since.

cmh

Awesome job Cypress. Congrats on your upgrade to Cat 4.

El Diablo Rojo

It's all because of the bike

Nice work Cypress great report!

aham23

Nice report and pics. Congrats. Later.

bigskymacadam

how cool is that? i say pretty damn cool.

timmhaan

nice photography. i hardly ever get to see photos of myself racing.

Cleave

So make me feel bad, why don't ya. Also, I never get shots of me racing that are of that quality or quantity. Maybe it's because I'm usually back in the pack. Ya think so?

Sounds like a great win.

Cypress

I was lucky enough to have my Dad and his gf there. My Dad was using my camera and she had my Dad's. He isn't the kind of guy that sits at the finish line and waits. He would drive up the road, take pics, then do it again. There are some really good ones on his camera. They drove up next to us and took some pics too.

botto 

well done. the two times that my folks came to watch me race back during my serious racing days i ended up getting caught up in crashes

derath

Easy, I just compare the size of the calves.

Nice report. Well done. Makes me want to get into racing.

-D

LilSprocket

Awesome Pics! Go Dad! Thanks for sharin' your ride, very nice

Cypress

You should get into racing. Make sure it's road racing though and not crit racing. Starting off a career with crits is dooming yourself to hate riding competitively.

Oh, here is an unshrunk very cropped version of one of the pics. Finally a picture of me with leg muscles in action.

krazyderek

TRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUE DAT!!!! Last year i did one race, my city's local crit, got dropped after 35 mins, first and last race that year. This year i'm leading the points series for Cat 4 in road racing, and the local crit is next month, i'm'a own that shiznit up and down the street until the 60mins are up.

Starclimber

Great report, fabulous pictures. I couldn't help thinking that the 'Trucks use lower gear' sign could stand a 'Cyclists use higher gear' refit. Good job reading the unfolding race, too, impressive use of the noggin under the strain of all that physical abuse.

GuitarWizard

Great work D....

That's a bit of climbing. I have a pretty hilly 45 miler around here that gains just over half the total elevation of what you guys did (it's around 2,200 feet), but the hills around here are nowhere near as long as out west. Steeper and shorter, so it's hard to get into a rythym. Combined with the fact on that particular route, the hard uphill part is all on chip seal pavement, it's pretty brutal. You'd love it.

Not much in the way of trees out there to block the wind though....and nothing is worse than grinding up a double digit grade with a ****ing headwind.

Jose R

ok, Q:

What's up with the race numbers in this picture? all three have it pinned in different places.

derath

I may, but this year I will be happy with just getting back into shape. New second kid and all that. But I am trying to train like I wanna race. Even if I never do, it makes it fun.

-D

Smoothie104

nice job!!

Bobby Lex

USCF official could just as well have taken note of the fact that taking your hands off the handlebars merits a DQ.

Happened in a race I was in a couple of months ago. Rider crosses the line about 20 feet ahead of the pack and raises his arms in victory only to be DQ'd by the race official. Can you say bummer?

Bob

Cypress

I usually cross the line in the drops in a full on sprint, so the number on my side is so the officials can read it. The guy in the back doesn't have his number in the right place. The front runner has his pinned to lessen wind drag. I load my # with pins so it can't become a parachute.

2wheeled

Great report and congrats on the win.
I love that 3rd pic of the hill...awesome.

Warblade

Now its time for the upgrade to Cat 3! I upgraded last to Cat 3 and boy is it a lot more difficult than upgrading to Cat 4. But it's a lot more easier to stay in the front this year seeing that I'm a year older, at 16. None-the-less you should do quite well in the 4's! Good luck.

Cypress

I figure it shouldn't be too bad to get to 3. I've been racing against the 4's for my entire road career (and beating the majority of them).

I've got two more races that I plan on hitting hard this year. A multi day stage race, and the state championship race. Anything that pops up in between will be used for "training".