Race Report: Out of the Frying Pan, into the Fire: The Tucson Bicycle Classic
Lucas Binder, SKLZ pb Pista Palace

The second stage race of March is the Tucson Bicycle Classic out in Arizona. Like most stage races it is 3 days long, starting with a time trial. The one notable difference about this stage race is that rather than ending in the traditional non-GC-affecting crit, it ends with brutal 50 mile circuit race that can potentially scramble the GC more than Jens Voigt scrambles a dozen ostrich eggs before every 6-hour training ride. It would be a full 3 days of stage racing.

Stage 1: Prologue Time Trial, 3.8 miles
What potential the final day had to affect the GC was made up for by a lack of potential to get GC time on the first day. It was a short, rolling time trial course that would be won by very few seconds. I had a poor time trial and learned the hard way that getting in a good warm up is more important than using a disk. Next time I’ll be sure to spend less time fumbling to put a cassette on a disk and more time on the trainer. Fortunately my teammate, Stevie Cullinan, showed he can time trial with the best and placed 4th in the TT, a mere 2 seconds down from the winning time set by Phil Zajicek (Monster Media). Alister Ratclif f(BikeReg) and Evan Hyde (RealCyclist.com) rounded out the podium. But with 140 miles more of racing the GC was anything but set.

Stage 2: Road Race, 90 miles
With hot weather, 90 miles, and close to 4000 ft of climbing the road race would be difficult at any speed. However the pace for most of the race was pretty slow. On the first lap a single RideClean rider went off the front and the pack was content to let him hang out there for a while as a single, teammateless Swamis rider took it upon himself to do most of the work to bring him back.

Sometime during the second lap the lone rider was finally brought back and more serious counterattacks began. Coming through the feed zone a break of 3 or 4 riders got up the road. I am not sure who was in it besides a Mexican rider from the P&S team but the gap grew to around a minute and a half as we approached the 3rd lap. Before it got any bigger I got to the front and joined my teammates to help bring it back. Some miles later, after we had begun the 3rd lap, everything was back together. I drifted to the back of the pack as we neared the top of the climb and saw my teammate Stevie going backwards much faster with a flat tire. I stopped to give him my wheel but the wheel support motorcycle beat me to it and I was able to help pace him back to the field as we began the decent leading up into the 4th and final lap.

There were a lot of solo attacks near the top of the climb on the final lap which strung out the field, but nothing being able to get much of a gap. Before the descent I moved towards the front and began to follow wheels. The Mexican P&S team attacked mercilessly but as long as someone was sitting on their wheel they would never get far. As we began to go downhill I followed an attack and Stevie was on my wheel. Seeing that we had a gap I began to take hard pulls. We worked together well with 4 or 5 other riders and were away for a few miles but never had more than 10 seconds on the rest of the group, getting caught just before the bottom of the descent. On the flat section leading up to the finish climb the attacks continued. I tried to stay near the front as much as I could but as we turned into the finishing climb all I could do was sit in. The final miles were uphill and into a headwind. P&S riders would go off the front one after the other only to be pushed back into the field by the headwind.

Coming out of the final chaotic sprint to take the win was Cole House (RealCyclist.com), followed by Victor Riquelme (Wondeful Pistachios) and Zachary Davies. Nothing was won on the second stage but fortunately nothing was lost either. The top 5 on GC would remain the same going into the circuit race on the final day.

Stage 3: Circuit Race, 50 miles
The circuit race started off totally opposite from how the road race started. From the gun a P&S rider attacked hard and took a few other riders with him. My role for the day was to chase so I got to the front as soon as I could and started pulling. I pulled for a little over a mile, with no luck getting any of the riders behind me to help. Before I started to fade too bad my teammate Eric Marcotte (SKLZ/Pista Palace) attacked to bridge up to the break. This finally got a reaction from the field which was quick to follow him in pursuit of the break. I flew backwards as we began to hit the uphill rollers, hitting the very back of the peloton just as we began to go downhill. I recovered for the next half lap or so before moving back towards the front.

A lap or two later a group got off the front that included my teammate Anthony Aker (SKLZ/Pista Palace), Paul Thomas (RideClean), and a few other riders from the P&S and other teams. Over the next few laps they would extend their lead to over a minute, and eventually a minute and a half, as the field hesitated to organize a chase. The big team that missed out on the break was the Kenda/5-Hour Energy team, who began to chase hard as we came to the half way point of the race. About halfway through the race Stevie got a very unlucky flat tire and was not able to catch back on to the hard chasing field.

In the second half of the race the break began to fall apart and in the final 2 laps only 2 riders were left up the road: Paul Thomas (RideClean) and a P&S rider. Coming into the bell lap the gap was around 55 seconds. I continued to take pulls with my teammate to bring the break back and give our sprinter, Eric Marcotte, a chance for the win. As we approached the uphill I began to drift to the back, I looked behind to see that the field was reduced to about 30 riders, with more falling off the pace. As we passed the feed zone I felt my rear tire start to feel soft under me and soon I lost contact with the end of the field. I had a slow leak and was able to ride the last half lap before my tire went entirely flat.

Up ahead in the beak the P&S rider had attacked Paul Thomas and was going for all of the glory on his own. However, he was caught shortly after Paul Thomas, with about 1 kilometer to go. Once again the sprint was uphill and into a headwind. Cole House (RealCyclist.com) once again timed his sprint well and took the stage win, with Eric Marcotte (SKLZ/Pista Palace) getting 2nd and Nichol Schreiber (Landis-Trek) in 3rd.

With the time bonuses on the day the final GC still had Phil Zajicek (MonsterMedia) in first by just 1 second over Eric Mracotte (SKLZ/Pista Palace) and Alister Ratcliff (BikeReg) at the same time (when tied on time the higher GC placing goes to whoever placed higher in the road race).

Unfortunately, we didn’t get the overall win but it was still a strong team effort to get one of our guys up onto the podium against some other strong teams. Teams we will be racing against again very soon because it turns out SKLZ/Pista Palace will be doing Redlands after all. That will be our next race and the first NRC race of the year, where things will really start to heat up.