July 13, 2006 - Tour de Beauce

Fiordifrutta send a squad to battle with the pros at one of the hardest races in North America. Teams from Germany, Australia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Mexico, and Japan had traveled to compete in this event. Josh Dillon writes in with an amusing race report where he road to an 11th place in the time trial and 36th overall.

Tour de Beauce, UCI 2.2, June 13-18

This is a hard race. Hard because it is UCI with over 10 countries represented, including 4 current national champions (and another handful of former national and world champs). Hard because it is 6 days of ~100 miles of rugged tarmac often strung out in single file for hours on end, before ending with 18% climbs. And hard because quebecois haven't the slightest clue how to make a good chocolate milkshake. damn. because the race is so hard, we wouldn't have lasted 2 days without the incredible support we had (thank you Nordblom and Mrs. Timmerman).

Day 0: arrive at chateau Roz in Montreal. This was our first introduction to tough riding conditions, as I managed to flat on the bike path. Full fiordifrutta team, all kitted up, standing on the bike path watching their teammate change a flat is not that cool. Sorry team.

Day 1: the so called "flat" stage was anything but flat. And for the few miles it was flat, I was flat out trying to hold the wheel in front of me that was incredibly perched on the very last inch of pavement on the left hand side of the road. Our Beauce tour guide, Bucker, showed up to ride and finished in one of the first couple groups.

Gewirtz and I finished together and I think I was 80 something place, 1 spot behind Canadian phenom phil cortes. Dan Timmerman and Roz were taken down by a crash so Timmerman had to ride in on a beach cruiser and Roz left half of his shoulder on the road. The next morning quite a few riders woke up with a case of 'caravan arm' due to the crash.

Day 2: "medium" hills stage. Again Bucker showed up to ride and made the move of the day (probably had good legs because of his laced topped stockings he insisted on wearing around the dorms, no joke. He said they are for stage racing but my guess is you don't see Lance parading around France in those things.

It wasn't until the kom's towards the end of the stage where it started to go hard. I started going better by these and made it over the summit's ~top 20 with Timmerman. At this time I will note that Whitey was tackling these same climbs and single file gutter riding with two bottles in his bike, two bottles in his pockets, and two bottles in his jersey. damn.

Day 3: "hilly" stage. I guess it finally counts as "hilly" when the stage finishes on Quebec's version of Mt. Washington. Not to mention the 10 mile run into the final climb was flat out in the gutter with riders popping off every minute. After being at threshold for 30 minutes I didn't quite have the pop to stay with Danny Pate up Megantic and finished in the top 25. This was the day that our team leader Timmerman came down with a nice case of strept throat. lovely. (more on canadian bourne sicknesses to follow).

Day 4: Off day, no wait a tt. Another day of going as hard as you can. This time it kind of paid off with a ride that tied for 9th place, except the two other guys with the same time were Canadian so I got 11th...not sure how that works, but 11th ain't bad either.

Day 4.5: But then we had the afternoon off, no wait a 60 km criterium. So we rode around in circles for a couple hours just making sure to keep the bikes upright as some of the riders' countries don't EVER have criteriums and their bike handling reflects that. Otherwise fairly uneventful.

Day 5: Quebec City circuit race. Kind of like the Univest circuit except the hill is steeper and longer, and the riders are faster...and it is after 4 days of racing. oh yeah, and they didn't close the streets either. After the second time up the wall, I broke a spoke and was pretty concerned that my week had ended. After a very slow wheel change I looked up to start riding and saw Roz waiting to pull me on. We seriously hammered and made it back on, but unfortunately at the cost of Roz's finish.

It did move us up into the top 20, but we could have done without the broken spoke. Also, this stage was stopped halfway through because a car came onto the course and hit Mark Walters. We then restarted with the course left relatively unchanged and the legs fully loaded with lactic acid.

Day 6: St Georges circuit race. Kind of like Univest circuit except the hill is 3x as long, and the riders are faster...and it is after 5 days of racing. Finally a relatively calm day of racing, other than it was nearly 100 degrees so we went through a bottle about every 20-30 minutes. It is a good thing Todd and Laura were able to pick up all those extra bottles in the feed zone the day before otherwise we would have been hurting (more hurting than normal).

After the race may have been the highlight of the week for me, as I was selected for drug testing. Even though it was random testing, I still think it is cool because somewhere someone I don't know cares whether or not I'm racing clean. So that means I must be sort of good, right? Probably not, but we did have one more buffet dinner at the hotel and then hit the road, with $43 Canadian (to be split 8 ways) in our pockets for our efforts. Jackpot.