The Breck Epic
Stage 2- Colorado Loop
Cory Wallace / 06.07.2009
At 9am this morning under blue skies the 150 riders took off up the first 4 mile climb to start the 37 mile second stage. The pace was solid right from the start with Travis Brown leading the way into the first singletrack with a group of 6 riders right on his tail. I managed to hang onto this group 95% of the way up the climb but then my lungs blew out and I suffered as I tried to recover in the thin air. Usually a rider can recover after a couple minutes from such an effort but today it took closer to 20 with over thirty riders passing me in that time.
I\'m not sure if this is completely due to the elevation but my lungs suffered more then the previous day and I heard alot of riders saying the same. If this trend keeps up for the rest of the race there may be a crew of us low landers trying to find the nearest dive shop for some O2 tanks to strap on our bikes!
Once I got going again I soon suffered the first of 3 flats on the day. This was a very common theme as riders were flatting all over the rocky course. Blake Harlan (Jamis) who was 9th in the prologue suffered 4 flats to finish back in 25th spot today. The leaders, Bishop (Cannondale) and Brown (Trek) were riding smoother then the rest of us with Bishop taking the stage victory in a time of 2:47:25 with Brown 22 seconds back. Ben Thompson (Cannondale) came in third 2:37 behind the leaders.
Overall the course today was very solid as close to 60% was singletrack with much of it cutting across alpine meadows and through thin pine forests. I overheard a couple riders stating \"I just had to stop for a picture\". These guys had a perfectly legitimate reason to say this as the snow-capped rockies were visible from many of the openings along the way and for a couple seconds along the way I even quit sufffering for a bit as I glanced around at the surrounding landscape.
Tommorow\'s stage we are told is going to be a lot rougher with even more vertical change although the mileage will be a little shorter at 28. For now its back to tent village to get ready for another shallow breathing day in the Rockies.
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