Race Report: 2024 Green Mountain Stage Race - Men’s P/1/2

Race: Green Mountain Stage Race - Men’s P/1/2

Date: 8/30/24-9/02/24

AVRT Racers: Nathan Martin

Top Result: 10th overall, 5th Stage 1

Stage 1 - TT: 

Nutrition: 1 gel before

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12282803944

Recap: 

My strategy for this was basically going all out for ~10 mins, then holding on for dear life the rest of the TT. I plugged the course into bestbikesplit the night before and generated some rough power markers for each section of the course. It was more for me to get an idea of where to go hard and where to ease up, because it’s a pretty tricky climb. Steep in parts, shallow in others, can be easy to go hard where you don’t need to.

Overall, not much to it beyond just sort of following the plan and gritting my teeth. I was super surprised to have a 5th place finish, I missed my power number by a bit and there were loads of strong riders, so was awesome to see.

Stage 2 - Circuit Race:

Nutrition: 3 bottles of mix, 1 gel

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12291205771

Recap: My goal for this stage was basically just to finish. There was some rain on the forecast, it’s a big group with center line rule enforced on narrow New England roads, and I learned last year that Stage 3 requires every bit of energy you can save, so wanted to do as little work as possible.

It made for a pretty uninteresting race for me. I basically sat in, and just tried to stay in the top 20-30 wheels or so. It was absolutely pouring with rain in the middle of laps 2 and 3, some odd weather due to the hills around us causing the rain to be on the same part of the course both laps, and then the rest of the course was dry. But the descent was pretty wet each time, and it’s fast with poor pavement so was a little nerve-wracking.

I think I did a decent job of saving energy and eating well. Didn’t chase any moves, didn’t take any solo fliers, and was lucky enough that everything that did slip off the front got chased back. Nice day for me.

Stage 3 - Road Race: 

Nutrition: 3 bottles of mix, 2 gels

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12300384781

Recap: This was basically the stage I cared most about. Minutes of time for GC to be won or lost here, and I was hoping to do well. My plan was to stay with the main group up each of the first two climbs, but not go with any breakaways. 

The first climb was a ripper of a climb. My heartrate was getting up there, the group was already splitting up, and I was really worried when I saw some other high up on GC riders slipping off the front towards the top, but I stayed patient and they were brought back on the flat top and the descent.

After the first climb and for the first 5-10 miles or so, there was a ton of attacking to establish a breakaway. I covered a few moves here I deemed dangerous, but generally stayed towards the front trying to not do much work, but it’s hard to avoid doing work with lots of sudden accelerations, so my power profile is a bit spiky here.

Once the break got established, however, the group eased up quite a lot, and I was able to take in the scenery a bit. GMSR is a tough race, hard to get to, and just generally a lot of effort, but man the scenery here was amazing. We’d rip through open valleys with hills on either side, then dive onto a windy twisty road in a narrow canyon with a river right below us, cutting over covered bridges and ripping through small towns. It was pretty fun.

We hit the second climb, the feed zone was right at the bottom and was able to get a bottle, I expected it to light up a bit on the climb but it was reasonably steady, nothing too crazy. We could see the break still, so I think people weren’t wanting to overdo it or anything.

The descent right after the top was a little technical and fast, navigated it safely, and then was more of the same, just sort of staying in the group trying to conserve energy for the final climb.

We got some time updates as the miles ticked over that the break had about 3 minutes on us at one point. There really weren’t any teams large enough to organize a chase, some small teams were doing some work, but really people weren’t working that well together.

As we hit Baby App Gap, there was still a really big gap, and at that point it was pretty obvious the break would stay away. On this penultimate climb, I did some work staying on top of some accelerations, maybe this wasn’t the smartest move, but I felt they were dangerous and did some work to cover them.

We hit the top of Baby App Gap, and from there it’s just a descent to the start of App Gap. I had decent position at the top of the descent, but got swarmed a bit on the downhill and filtered back a bit.

Once we hit the climb, I ate a bit of wind trying to hold position and move up, and think this really hurt me a bit. When the climb started to get steep and accelerations started going, I had nothing to follow them and just had to try to go my own pace the rest of the climb.

I would end up losing a couple minutes, finishing 22nd, and dropping to 13th overall. Not too sure what went wrong, didn’t do too much work the whole day, maybe a little bit much right in the fight for position, but nothing crazy. Just a lot of strong people out there who could ride bikes really fast.

Stage 4 - Crit: 

Nutrition: 1 gel before, some of a bottle of mix during

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12308929327

Recap: My nemesis. Last year, I lasted about 5 minutes in this crit before being pulled. It was a different course this year, but in many ways harder than last years. Technical, bad pavement, and the bottom of the descent had a weird corner where the edge of the sidewalk sort of jutted out into the apex of the turn, so you had to really slow down before taking it.

I had a decent starting position, about 50th or so. Some people had waited 45 minutes to get a good spot, and for good reason. This would string out fast, gaps would open up, and people would be gassed early.

The race started fast, people stringing it out early just as expected. I was hanging on well, closing some gaps, but still nowhere near the front.

My goal was to make it 15-20 minutes. It seems every hard crit ever is excruciatingly hard for about that long, then it lets up. Sure enough, about 15 minutes in, the pace started to ease up and I could breath.

Still, I was not near the front. I probably only ever got up into the top 15 wheels or so, staying most of the time near the back. I’d keep looking back and the group would be getting smaller and smaller. Eventually at the finish, we were only 35 or so of 100 starters.

Because it was such a tough crit, some GC riders were dropped, and I was able to sneak into the top 10! Overall, super happy to finish the crit and finish top 10 overall. Disappointed that I fell apart on Stage 3 and maybe could have finished even higher, but improved over last year and had fun, which was the goal. Excited to go back next year for sure!