Neil Shirley Diary Tour De Beauce – Stage 5
6/15/08 - I’m still in a fog from today’s Saint Georges circuit race. The 90-mile, 15 lap race had a leg breaker 1-mile climb every lap. With the GC so close it was going to be a battle today especially considering that the finish was at the top of the climb. I wanted to be aggressive early and see if I could get up the road. Well, I accomplished my goal. The very first time up the climb a break formed about midway up. I jumped across with 200 meters to go to the top and caught on just before the descent. Initially it was 11 of us but 3 laps later 3 more finally caught on after a long chase.
Team Type 1, Sparkasse, and Pezula all had two riders in the break. Tecos, Colombia National Team, Team RACE, and of course Jittery Joe’s all had a rider in the break. Also, the huge crowd favorite and local Charles Dionne was representing for Quebec.
The gap to the field was slowly growing lap after lap. The break wasn’t working that well together. With Team Type 1 not content with whom they had in the move they weren’t putting much effort into the move. This created some issues, as no one was willing to tow Team Type 1 around the whole time. I was not feeling very good, but this wasn’t much of a shock as that’s how the last two weeks have gone for me. We gained up to four minutes before Symmetrics started whittling down the gap. With four laps to go the attacks started coming and I started going, backwards. The break split into three groups on the climb. I was in the third group with Charles Dionne, the Colombian National Team rider and Ryan Roth from Team RACE. We did what we could to get back to the leaders but we where all spent. The first and the second group ended up coming back together but we could never get back on terms with them. We tried to make it to the finish before the field caught us but to no avail. We were caught with 6 kilometers to go in the race. The other riders from the break ended up staying away for the finish. The German Sparkasse team took advantage of having two in the break and took first and second after dropping everyone else.
I wish we could have stayed away but I have no regrets, I rode 100% today and left everything out on the road. Under different circumstances I would really love this circuit race but with how I’m going right now I suffered nonstop for four hours! It really does build character to turn yourself inside out, over and over again. Days like these make the good days that much sweeter. My teammate Matt Shriver had good legs today and finished in 15th.
Tomorrow we head to Quebec City. Quebec City is a gorgeous European style city with a lot of history. It is celebrating its 400th Anniversary this year. The final stage is another circuit race on a very demanding course. It’s a little shorter than today but I think it’s still around 75-miles. Symmetrics did an amazing job today defending Tuft’s lead. No one will be holding anything back tomorrow but I think Symmetrics is up to the task.Thanks for reading!
