Sweet Open Blog

Assault on Devil’s Kitchen - Cat 4B Race Report

In advance of the Tour of the Catskills actually starting up, a single 2 mile stretch of road held all my worries and even prompted me to neglect and ignore the 4 mile 8% climb that somehow popped up in the race course on Saturday.  

That’s of course the suitably frightening Devil’s Kitchen, 

Now this year has mostly been a refresher into cycling for me - and I am by no means a natural climber - so with no real hopes of a great performance over the climb, I entered the stage with hopes of a) maybe a break and b) not injuring myself on the climb itself. Jake was reasonably well positioned on GC after his 10th place on Saturday, but not near enough that we really needed to (or could) do anything to defend.

We started off to an understandably pedestrian (less equestrian) pace - a few stragglers hopped off the front early with no real hope & the pack content to let them sit 10s off. My legs started to feel antsy, so after a quick chat with Will, I moseyed towards the front on the right side just as a three person move decided to launch from the left and launched right in with them. Perfect timing I thought for an instant - but the yellow jersey was there, so that didn’t go. We were caught, & I went again from the yellows wheel. I had the gap for a little while, waiting (hoping) for someone to come on over. A few came - but those few quickly led to the rest of the pack and my little foray was for naught. I tried again a few minutes later hoping someone would go - again, noone, and came back to the pack rather meekly as there was no way I was in shape to do anything on my own. Time to enjoy the sweet open roads (oh so many 5’s),  wait until the climb and not get injured (you know, high expectations and all).

Ten miles later the real break went and I was well out of position - ah well. Should have waited until a) the climb was in fact imminent rather than still 20 miles out and b) the awesome narrow country roads cut the comfortable width of our cat 4 field to 3 riders.

DEVILS KITCHEN

I was sitting comfortably with Blakely at the lead up to the climb. We were both feeling better than Saturday & sitting roughly midpack while Jake hit the front group to start the climb. Everyone was of course frightened of the climb and the fact that it was so vicious and so hyped lead to near everyone planning on taking it easy. As we hit a small riser (say, 4%) before the climb even started, the folks just in front of Blakely and I imagined another 10% there and let a nice big ol gap open up immediately. I pulled Blakely past the preclimb gappers; we hit the base of the kitchen; I clicked into the 28 for good & we crossed the 4k to go sign. As expected, Blakely pulled away from me and Jake was well up the road.

I tried to take the first half of the climb reasonably easy, but well, with pitches sort of steep, I was having trouble. Now Cosmo, see, he’s kind of a god among men. He brought an 8-pack of mini cokes in from Hartford and I had the last one in my jersey pocket. As I was inching towards the 2k to go mark and the road dropped down to a comfortable 8% grade, i ripped it out and pounded it down. 

That was amazing - I’m convinced Coke has extra magical properties during bike races and the second half of the climb was much better than the first (and maybe walking *would have* helped too, you know, *if I did it*). I played leapfrog with the wheel van and left it smoking in my wake. The crowds cheered wildly (“it’s all uphill from here!”, “hurry up, the women are right behind you!”) and I in fact made it over the top and started catching some peeps for the 10 miles of rollers we had until the finish. Fun time rolling it in, got a group together to take some hard pulls and try to bring back a bit of the eternity lost on the pitches of the kitchen. Blakely finished in the group just ahead of us, Jake was a bit further up the road, coming in just behind the front group.

Stage Results:

18 - 4:00 - Jake McLaughlin

29 - 7:37 - Will Blakely

35 - 8:36 - Darrell Hoy

Ending GC:

17 - 4:56 - Jake McLaughlin

36 - 18:48 - Will Blakeley

45 - 26:57 - Darrell Hoy

Newly discovered faves:

1. Half cans of coke - anyone know of a UV source?
2. Vittoria 24mm Open Pave - first stage race ever with no flats or mechanicals (!!)
3. SRAM’s 11-28 cassette - definitely necessary and I was even still envious of Jake’s compact

And of course, the Tour of the Catskills race itself. It was a great weekend - definitely have to come back next year. I never had to wait more than 30 seconds for a bathroom the whole weekend, ice cream and watermelon were at the end of Saturday’s brutal race and all the townsfolk were great. So many of the roads too were phenomenal - great & rare too to have two single circuit road races in the same weekend.