Tour of the Catskills Race Recap - Yellow & KOM

This past weekend the Monroe/SBR boys headed to Windham and Hunter, NY for 3 days of racing in Catskills.  In the 4’s race we had Jason, Chad, Rick, Marty and Phil and Adam was representing he team in the 3’s race.

Jason about to make the catch on TT

The team after TTFriday was the 2.2 mile uphill TT prologue to kick things off for the weekend. The team had good results and after all was said and done, Jason was sitting 3rd overall in the 4’s race as he caught his 30 second and 1 minute men at the finish.  With Jason’s placing the team knew we had a good chance of success over the weekend.  Adam in the 3’s TT rode strong, even though we know he just wants to sprint.

Saturday was the first of 2 days of 50+ mile races, with a decisive climb that would surely split up the field.  Before the decisive climb there was plenty of controversy as there was this slight incident with people riding horses and 76 riders coming to a halt and a few nearly getting trampled.  One rider in the peloton had a camera on his bike and so here’s a link to the video. During this run in with the horses, 2 riders decided to

continue on and ended up with a 2 minute advantage on the field, which had decided to neutralize things for a few moments to make sure everyone was ok and we could get back to racing - except for those two guys.  Both strong riders as they stayed away the rest of the day, but it’s not to say if other people had been with them then the results could have been different at the end of the day.  Their attack was right before the 5km climb and so they were gone.  As promised, the 5km KOM 1 split the field and Jason was able to hang with the front group and ended up 6th on the day and took a few KOM points over 1 and 2.  At the end of the day he was 6th overall.  Coming in the group behind was Rick & Chad with Rick taking the field sprint to finish 24 overall for the first 2 days.  Marty had a Shleck moment as he dropped his chain..needed to adjust the K-Edge.

Sunday brought the final day of racing with the infamous Devil’s Kitchen Climb that featured 1.7 miles of an average 14% gradient and hit 20-22% a few times on it.  At the beginning of the day, Jason was sitting about a minute and 30 seconds from the Yellow Jersey and a few points from the KOM Jersey.  First goal of the day for the team was to work to get more KOM points for Jason and steal points from the current leader.  After the the rolling neutral for a few miles the race was on with 8 miles to the first KOM of the day.  Rick taking full points on 1st KOMRick leisurely rolled off the front of the pack to get the legs loosened and realized he had a gap, so it was time to really make something happen and went into TT mode.  Rick gained about a 2+ minute advantage on the field and rolled in easily over the first KOM to take maximum points.  Jason followed to take second on the this KOM and the KOM leader missed out on 3rd and got nothing! Perfect, points for Jason and none for the KOM.Jason getting KOM points on Sunday

The race after that was a fast pace leading up to the KOM with an attack by a few riders in the feedzone and so a small threat had gained a few minutes on the pack.  The Monroe/SBR boys realized they had some work to do and so helped chase this break down with time gap reports by the motorbike, which all showed the time was coming down.  As one rider after the race said, it was like watching Saxo-Bank taking control of things.  Once the peloton got to the base of the Devils Kitchen Climb it was up to Jason to deliver on his promises of making things hot in the kitchen! As Jason took to the climb, he forced such a pace up it that he dropped the Yellow Jersey leader and the KOM leader and took the full KOM points at the top and put in a 3+ minute advantage over the Yellow Jersey.  Jason assault on the final climb of the day helped him win the stage and also the overall for GC and also the KOM overall.  Jason won both jerseys!

Yellow! Overall Leader & Winner in the end!

Sorry, but Jason will take this jersey too!It was a great race as the team worked for Jason and did everything to keep him fresh to he could have fun in the Kitchen and extinguish his competition.  The weekend was great overall, as the team shared a house with great views in Hunter and was the biggest race some of us had done yet.  Adam rode a tough race throughout the weekend and did a good job to finish and gain a ton of experience for future races and next year.  He’s ready for a few crits though now.