Hell's Kitchen RR

Friday night at Freestate, a group of us decided to head down to Arkansas to race in a gnarly road race called Hell's Kitchen. We spent the night at KU teammate Blake Romine's place and enjoyed the hospitality of his parents. They had a place for each of us to sleep, delicious pancakes at 5:30am, and bananas and powerade for us to take.

We arrived at the race location plenty early and had time to do a little warm up before the 60 mile race began. At 44 degrees and overcast, the day was looking to be chilly, but luckily there wasn't really much wind. The course consists of 3 laps of a 20 mile course with 1 good sized hill and then 1 HUGE hill called "Hell's Kitchen." Looking at the garmin stats, the first hill was a good 9-10% gradient and the Hell's kitchen hill gradient is as follows: 9% for awhile, 3% for a bit, up to 11% for awhile, down to 4% briefly, kick up to 18%, down to 9% (around a bend), kick up to 12%, and then gradually level off until the 11% feed zone hill. This hill is about 2 miles long from the beginning till the feed zone end.

The Cat. 3 group took off about 10 minutes after the PRO/1/2 field, and things seemed to be going rather slowly. Matt was up front setting pace, and I was just surveying the field in my first Cat. 3 road race. Everything held together until the 2nd lap where Matt attacked on the 1st good sized hill and 4 other guys followed, I thought I could make it, but popped and could hardly make it up with the rest of the field. From here, the Walmart guys began to chase hard because they had no one in the break. The pace was blistering, and I was hurting. We ended up catching the 1/2 field and passing them. They then passed us, and then we passed them up again for quite a while. Matt's group must have been long gone. The 1/2s didn't catch us until Hell's kitchen, where Brian Jensen was attacking hard with Steve Tilford in tow. At this point, there were 1s, 2s, and 3s all mixed up. I was blown and so were many of the other 1/2/3s. So everyone began to work together to try and catch our respective fields. I'm not sure what ended up happening relegation wise, but I'm pretty sure some guys were DQ'd for working with other categories. I know for awhile there were 1/2s sucking my wheel until I finally blew for good. About 4 miles from the end of the 2nd lap, I was done, cooked, and ready to quit. I worked with several guys who were also cooked, but I kept getting more and more weak. I ended up riding the last lap by myself, took a pee break, and talked with some other guys along the way that had also been popped and were finishing solo. I was hurting pretty bad, and didn't think I was going to make it up Hell's Kitchen the 3rd time. I suffered, but made it. With 2k to go, a group of 4 Cat 3s came blowing around me from out of nowhere. Weird, I figured all the Cat 3s had either quit or were in front of me. So I caught on, worked for a bit, and then only beat 2 of the guys out on the finishing hill.

Good race for experience I suppose. This was the first time this year that I have felt some decent form before I blew. I guess the endurance will come shortly. No idea how I finished, but dammit I finished.

Miles 15-58 of the race. Shows 2 of the Hell's Kitchen hills.