GamJams Racers Climb Across Two States

This past weekend saw several riders from GamJams GS competing in two not-so-local events.  Eric Puffenbarger and Gerardo Sore both entered the Tour of Tucker County, WV.  Nate Hakken, on the other had, made the long road trip to the Killington Stage Race, VT.  All three reported success and the desire to return to these races again next year.

In the Tour of Tucker County, the GamJams contingent faced the demanding course, called one of the "ten most difficult races in America," with a relative degree of confidence.  Sore, who hails from Frederick County, MD, drove parts of the course and was reassured that the final climb reminded him of his home turf on the Hamburg Hill.  It was longer but the gradient changes were similar.  Though he says he "excused himself out of the back of the lead group" to keep from completely blowing up on the final climbs, he reports that the race was fun.  How so?  "It might have been the Megatron-sized windmills at the end, the thrashing of one's self on a climbing course, or just the adventure that is WV.  It was just fun." 

Puffenbarger competed in the Cat 5 event and, though he threw a chain in the middle of one climbing section, was able to latch on to a chasing group and finish 7th overall.  He says that he was slightly disappointed with his final position and hopes to achieve more next year, but the high point, in his words, was when he rode past the "guy in the neon green sleeveless jersey with toe-clips. He was off his bike pushing it up the final steep section."  It's the little victories that sometimes mean the most.

Hakken made the nine hour drive in the middle of Memorial Day Weekend traffic up to Vermont to compete in the Killington Stage Race.  The first stage, a fast circuit with a downhill sprint that, in his words, "required brass ones," yielded a mass finish with no real indications of the eventual GC standings.  The Time Trial, however, was uphill and windy.  Hakken managed to "stay aero the whole time and pass five riders ahead" of him.  He finished the day in sixth, only 11 seconds off the podium.  He reports the final stage "was a brute with 2 big climbs totalling over 5,000 feet of climbing" and one that saw dramatic shakeups in the standings.  Along with the chaos of a field-shattering course, Hakken reports that he saw "some of the strangest things: a guy just fall over, a rider breaking the rule on public urination still attached to his bike in someone's front yard, parts of a cassette all over the road. I began to wonder if I was hallucinating."  In the end he was not hallucinating, but just riding hard on an exceptionally difficult stage.  Hakken finished just out of the money, a scant one score and six minutes off the lead pace, and reports that he enjoyed the race immensely, "the traffic home, not so much."

Comments

[macpage]

that was interesting. I still remember it