This season, Sam Boardman (Project Echelon) is making his first foray into the European peloton. In this instalment, it rains. A lot.
You can (and definitely should) read Sam’s previous dispatches, including the one from his first race, Trofeo Calvià, and his second, Trofeo Serra Tramuntana, where he got in the day’s breakaway, and Trofeo Pollença, where he got dropped.
The last time I wrote about a stage race consisting of a prologue and three road race stages, I likened it to a serving of tasty-looking gas station sushi hand-rolled by the Devil himself that, upon digestion, exacted a wicked diabolical revenge on its consumer. In this instance, the consumer was the peloton at large, and the race in question was Tour de la Provence, a truly horrid and humbling experience that I would like to think taught me resilience and perseverance, but, honestly, I think it just took years off my life. Oh well, here for a good time, not a long time, am I right? (Our team actually had a little feature made documenting our time there, which you should check out!)
In stark contrast, however, my most recent stage race exploits of the same format at the 16th Tour of Rhodes powered by Rodos Palace utterly revitalized me. This isn’t to say it didn’t come with its own set of ups and downs –indeed the encouragement I received at the end came hot on the heels of profound discouragement at the beginning, which we will get to in a minute – but I can confidently say that our final race on the eponymous beautiful Greek island deserved nothing close to a comparison to Satan’s sushi.
So, then, how best to describe the experience? Well, I am a snobby English major after all, and must thusly concede my proclivity not only to entertain pretentious prose with plethoras of pensive and poetic ponderings, but also to wax lyrical about wayward allegories, analogies, and apologues all in an attempt to assert and affirm abounding axioms, aphorisms, and apothegms. Hence, do I look to the prophetic words of influential authors and philosophers to reveal indelible truths and provide wise guidance as I process my time in this wild, wild world?
Eh, nah. How about a meme instead? Look, I am nothing if not a child of the internet, and, sure, I could go and find some quote from a favorite writer of mine that could beautifully sum up the adventures of a bike rider with profound insight, but there is something so attractive about the succinct near-universal relatability of a good meme when trying to express or convey emotion that it’s no wonder this is pretty much how my generation speaks to each other these days. Words be damned, wasn’t this what our teachers were telling us in middle and high school all along? Show, don’t tell? If I’m uncomfortable, I’m not going to tell you I’m uncomfortable. I’m going to send you a picture of Chrissy Teigan making this face. If I’m flabbergasted at something, I’m not going to tell you I’m flabbergasted at that something. I’m going to send you a gif of Drew Scanlon making this face. And, accordingly, if I wanted to tell you how my time at the Tour of Rhodes was a proverbial roller coaster of mental and physical highs and lows, I’m not going to tell you that it was a proverbial roller coaster of mental and physical highs and lows. I’m going to send you the clip of Brittany Broski trying kombucha for the first time and let you watch her run the absolute gamut of emotions that so perfectly captures my time at the race.
Oscillating between pure disgust, cautious optimism, abject denial, and, finally, giggly contentment, it’s a visual so wonderfully expansive that to not refer to it would be a disservice to modern storytelling. Is this a cry for help? A sign society is dying? Proof that we millennials are just the worst? I don’t know, dude, I’m just here to tell y’all about a bicycle competition, and it’s high time I did that, so, without further ado, let’s talk about cycling in Greece through the lens of a meme, shall we?
Prologue: The First Sip – Pure Disgust
“Nasty,” “filthy,” and “disgusting” are a few of the many counterintuitive words that, in the last couple of years that I have been in this sport, have been added to the cyclist’s Rolodex of vocabulary terms to describe an athletic feat that is just so preposterously stunning that it turns your world inside out. Up becomes down, bad becomes good, and positive becomes negative. Think of how neato burrito cool people talk these days: they see someone do an amazing trick on a skateboard, what do they say? Not, “Wow, that is a healthy individual who has used their athletic gift to hone their craft!” Nope, rather quite the opposite. They exclaim, “Siiiiiiick!” See, I know how to jive with the modern kids. Follow me and you’ll blend right in.
Truly, these adjectives are some of the only ways that I would describe what I saw and experienced during the Tour of Rhodes’ first day, a 3.8-kilometer uphill prologue that saw riders haul ass from a quaint little neighborhood recreation area up to the Filerimos Monastery at the top of the ascent. With regards to my own effort, my coach and I had mapped it out such that if I were on a good day and paced it right, I could probably heave myself up the hill in around 8 minutes and 40 seconds. But BOY OH BOY did I pace it wrong. A big fear of any cyclist is imploding mid-effort, and, in most cases, it’s completely justified. There are few things worse than cashing in all your chips early only to realize you drew a bust card and now have to limp it in for the remainder of the course. It’s happened to me on several occasions, and I was straight up not having a good time during each one, so I’ve developed a bit of an annoying predisposition to err on the side of caution when it comes to energy expenditure. Sometimes the conservatism has paid off, but, with efforts as short as this one, for example, I have now decided that my advice to anyone is this: if you are trying to conserve in a time trial that is less than 10 minutes long, you are doing it wrong.
In Provence, given that I was on a time trial bike, which I had spent limited time training on prior to the event, I had given myself a little wiggle room and had decided not to set any specific goals. This time around, however, I didn’t want to afford myself any excuses. To this day, my only UCI win is from an uphill time trial not dissimilar to the one we were tackling at Rhodes, and, for better or for worse, this meant I had at least some expectations. Consequently, I tempered the “Fuck it we ball” mentality of just going until blowing in favor of keeping the power within check and then letting loose in the second half when the road kicked up to steeper gradients.
But going back to my advice, we’re talking about 3.8 kilometers here. The “second half” where I would magically unleash the wattage I’d been keeping tamped down was still going to be only 4 minutes long, so I’m not really sure what I was expecting. Suffice to say, I went out way too slow in the first half, and didn’t have the distance nor gumption to try and make up time in the second.
Some of my competitors, however, were, as they say, on one, and here’s where we return to the aforementioned vocabulary. The winner on the day, Norwegian Andre Drege of Team Coop – Repsol put out an absolutely filthy 506 watts for 8 minutes and 8 seconds according to his strava file, with the final half somewhere well over 570 watts. His winning official time of 8 minutes and 5 seconds was a nasty 7 seconds clear of places two and three, which, in a time trial this short, is a LOT. Leave some scraps for the rest of us, eh? Our best finishers, Brendan and Tyler, were 18th and 19th, respectively, finishing literally on the same time, 30 seconds down, with Brendan revealing that he had done a record power for the time. Yours truly was bringing up the rear on the team, clocking in just shy of a minute down in 76th place, truly humbled.
Absolutely disgusting.
Stage 1: Letting the taste marinate – Cautious Optimism
In the sport economy of “what have you done for me lately,” I think many cyclists learn how to forget quickly, as it’s a good skill to practice when trying to move on from disappointment. In the immortal words of Ted Lasso, “You know what the happiest animal on Earth is? A goldfish. It’s got a ten-second memory.” So in prepping for Stage 2, I internalized his words, and the advice he gave to his player: “Be a goldfish, Sam.”
The team plan was to put Cade, Brendan, and me on breakaway duty while Hugo, Tyler, and Scott played it cool in the peloton waiting for the finish. The tactic is simple: you send satellite riders who think they may have trouble making it over the main climbs up the road so they have a buffer when they enter the hill, the idea being that, having been able to go a steadier pace rather than a surging one, they’ll have a better chance of making it over in the group. We weren’t going to initiate any moves, but rather only follow anything that looked promising, and if we didn’t end up getting someone in the escape, we weren’t going to try and rectify the situation. However, knowing full well that, for the entire season thus far, I had been exhibiting the climbing prowess of a brick tied to an anchor being carried by a hippo walking on Jupiter, I was keen to get myself into the day’s move.
The first 65 kilometers of Stage 1 perfectly mimicked the one-day race we had completed the weekend before, including the flat but windy coastal road followed by the nine-kilometer-long stair-stepping climb, the summit of which would mark the first KOM points sprint. So it was familiar territory, and I knew I did not want to tackle that with all the accelerations of a nervous group with a GC-battle now on the line. Thus, I decided my best bet to be useful to the team in the finale was to find my way into the day’s breakaway. After floating in the first ten wheels and following any move that got more than a bike’s length distance from the front for the first 35 minutes, the efforts paid off and I had gotten clear in a group of five consisting of one rider from Aevolo Cycling (an American U-23 development team), one from XSpeed United Continental (an international UCI team), one from Team IBT – Tripeak (a Danish/Swedish amateur squad), and two from CT Giant Store Assen – NWVG (a Dutch amateur outfit). Knowing that we still had another 25 kilometers until the start of the first major climb of the day, we spent no time dilly-dallying and got right to work pulling equal shares to ensure nobody would attempt a bridge across and re-ignite the breakaway battle. After about ten minutes, the peloton was out of sight, which meant it was time to initiate phase two: getting some KOM points.
Our little troop of escapees had come to the silent agreement that we weren’t going to get cagey until we got within sprinting distance of the KOM line, as we knew we would be kept on a short leash all day, so any cat-and-mousing could cost us valuable time if we started too early. We steadily cycled through, pulling equal shares until we got to within a kilometer from the sprint, which is when we started looking at each other. In the moment, it felt as though we were moving at warp speed, the reward of points and the chance at a jersey making everything seem so high-stakes in my mind, but the reality of it was that we were moving comically slow. It being a KOM sprint, after all, all of the action was happening on a slight uphill drag, which ended up being my saving grace. Since CT Giant Store Assen – NWVG had two riders, they kicked off proceedings with one rider launching off the front while the other sat back and disrupted others from following. Aevolo would chase and then send a flyer of his own, only to be brought back within 250 meters, resetting the game. It was XSpeed United’s turn, and he launched with 200 meters to go, but the uphill stretched his effort out longer than he would have liked, and I was able to come around him in the last 50 meters and cross the line for maximum points.
Intermediate sprint competitions are always strange. You enter the mindset of trying to “win the sprint”, which inevitably pumps you full of adrenaline, but yields the consequent lactic crash as you cross the line. Your body is relieved because the race is over, right? But your mind has to kindly step in and spell out the reminder that, no, it most definitely is not, so keep pedaling you moron if you want to keep this break alive. Snapping back into it, I rallied the group and was grateful that all of my breakaway mates were keen to keep at it. We quickly got back in line and began taking our turns once again as we traversed the next 18 kilometers of rollers ahead of the day’s last major climb. Not much of note happened during this time, save for a bizarre incident in which we caught the moto refs who had been in front of us on a downhill technical section, and for a solid 10 minutes we were descending in a pack that now included no fewer than five additional motorcycles who just couldn’t for the life of them figure out how to untangle their group from ours. It was a terrifying, but one that I think every cyclist gets a little ego boost from in some way or another. “You mean I caught something with a motor on it? Ooo la la, do behave, Sam,” I’d say to myself, you know, like an asshole. It did also, however, offer a short-lived mental break from the stress of the looming last big hill, which quickly returned once the motos had gotten clear of us and the reality of the situation once again set back in.
Roughly 4.5 kilometers long at an average gradient of eight percent, with pitches veering up to anywhere between 10 and 13 percent, the Profitis Ilias climb from Salakos was the real reason I think we all had gotten into the day’s breakaway in the first place. With the crew of bird-boned featherweights no more than a minute and thirty seconds behind in the peloton as we entered the base, we kept the pace high for as long as we could, shedding breakaway riders in the process hoping we could stay out front long enough to guarantee the chance to crest with the front pack. With 500 meters to go until the KOM sprint line, the peloton finally caught one of the Dutch riders from CT Giant Store Assen – NWVG and me, the last of the remaining escapees out front. However, miraculously, instead of falling back into the group and getting swarmed, I stayed at the front, and, lesson learned from the day before, I resolved that I had made it this far and dag nabbit I’m going to try for those KOM points even if it means I explode, implode, or any other kind of -plode.
I was ready to plode in whatever form destiny had in store for me if it meant that chance to wear a jersey. With 150 meters to go, I was still on the front row of riders waiting until I could see the line to go for the sprint. A rider from Team Voralberg opened up before I did, and I hastily followed, panicking that I had come all this way and was about to miss out. I emptied my tank and sprinted harder than I can remember sprinting in a long time, got a gap, and crossed the KOM points sprint first, maxing out on the points for the day and ensuring that I would wear the jersey for Stage 2. I was wheezing and elated, but once again was reminded very quickly that the day was not done, and we had entered the final stages of the race.
But hey, wow, I had made it over the top in the front group, the exhilarating novelty of which lasted me all the way down the descent, a sinuous and tree-covered plunge into a valley circuit with a small kicker that we would do twice before hopping back onto the coast and making our way back north. During this time, the rest of the team had made their way back into the main group, and we assembled to ready ourselves for the sprint. We had scoped the finish during the week prior to the start of the race and knew that it would be a late sprint given it was a slight uphill drag. We lined it out with about 3 kilometers to go, with Tyler and Scott our protected sprinters. As the road kicked up, ATT Investments, a Czech continental outfit, had their entire train parked on the front, and I tried my best to navigate the riders behind me around them to the right as the road curved in that direction, but my poor positioning led me to the left and taking the long line with about one kilometer to go. At that point, I realized I was of no use anymore, and peeled off, Hugo, Tyler, and Scott hopping onto the ATT Investments train with ease. As the road banked further right, the riders launched their sprint towards the line and they disappeared around the corner where a building blocked my view, so I had no idea how it shaped up until I crossed the line and saw our crew shouting and cheering together. Scott had won, nabbing the team’s second victory in less than a week.
Stage 2: On second thought, I’m not so sure about this – Abject denial
The age-old saying in bike racing is such because it is very true: you aren’t caught until you’re caught, so race until you are.
With a stage win and at least one day in the KOM jersey, the team couldn’t have been happier with how the first road stage had ended up. Scott, who I was rooming with, had even gone so far as to tell me he was “relieved” more than anything given how much he had recon’d the finish to Stage 1, a testament to the pressure he and the rest of the team put on themselves to meet the high expectations to they set.
The second day’s strategy was pretty much identical to the first day, although this time I was explicitly designated to get in the break and secure even more of a buffer on the jersey lead. Stage 2 would prove more difficult than Stage 1, with a lot more climbing spread out over the entire day, including a heap of hard rollers and kickers in the first 50 kilometers. Accordingly, the breakaway formation phase of the race was extremely contested, but we were racing forward and the first of the day’s big moves had Brendan in the wheels. However, odd tactical choices from some teams that included riders chasing their own teammates who were up the road, resulted in this move’s absorption back into the group after only about 20 minutes, followed immediately by a counter of six riders, including two of my breakaway mates from the day before and Cade. At this point, Team Coop-Repsol, Team Voralberg, and Team Felt Felbermayr began to fan out across the road and I knew that the classic blockade was about to be erected and I was watching the chance at keeping the KOM jersey go up the road. Despite having a teammate in the move, with riders who had been in the escape the day before and who had earned points there too, I couldn’t risk missing out on possible points, and I began frantically eyeing the sides of the road for a possible exit from behind the blockade. To my luck, a driveway on the left hand side of the road provided just such a pathway, and as soon as I got next to it, I cheekily boosted around the rider in front of me thanks to the extra stretch of pavement on the side, and despite shouts of “Left, left, LEFT!” it was too late. See ya later suckers, I’m free!
However, the smug feeling of my own craftiness was quickly replaced by utter dread, realizing I now had to chase solo to get onto a fully rotating sextet. I had attacked right before the base of a 1-kilometer climb and was recruiting muscles from every fiber of my being to try and catch the group before they crested and began the descent to the other side – lips, earlobes, teeth, my appendix, you name it, it was working its god dang darnedest to get me over that hill quickly. Alas, I did not make the bridge by the crest, and they quickly regained time on me on the ensuing descent. However, they remained in sight, which kept my motivation to complete the junction alive, dwindling as it may have been given the ever-growing feeling of futility as time wore on and I wasn’t making any headway. I was even screaming Cade’s name in an attempt to get his attention so he could slow the pace a little up front, but to no avail because…well, duh. I was probably 30 seconds behind the group and there was no way he would be able to hear me, so I’m not really sure what my Neanderthal brain was thinking in doing so, but at the moment it felt as though riding wasn’t enough, and doing something quite extra could genuinely help the effort. Finally, the group hit another small climb about 40 kilometers into the day, and after roughly 20 minutes of chasing, I was able to use the slower speed to my advantage and finally connect with the group.
Through to the KOM line, it was even rotations all around, with Cade doing great work to keep the pace high. I sprinted my brains out yet again to ensure maximum points, but it was clear nobody else was interested in contesting the competition. Instead, the main goal was to keep the break alive as long as possible, and here’s where I made a major mistake and found myself back in the emotional slump of second-guessing myself a la Ms. Broski after that fine fragrant fermentation really kicked in. After we tackled the middle section of the course and descended down to the valley, we had one long but shallow drag of a climb left, which also marked the final KOM sprint of the day. We had been getting word from the moto refs that the peloton was no more than 30 seconds behind us before we had even started the climb, so my assumption was that we were going to get caught either at the base or some time in the middle of the climb, so when a duo consisting of a rider from the Greek national team and a rider from Team IBT – Tripeak (not the same one from the day before) sent a flyer and got a gap, I wasn’t concerned, as my thought was that we were never going to make it to the top of the KOM anyway, and therefore those points had always been a lost cause.
As I kept looking back, the peloton that I had thought was breathing down our necks wasn’t even in sight on a long straight road. I eventually learned that the time gaps that had been taken were from a group of three chasers who had attacked off the front, gotten close, but had then were swallowed back up by the peloton, who then sat up again. By the time the peloton did catch us, we were only a kilometer from the top of the climb and I had realized the duo who had gotten off the front had stuck it over the top and earned themselves points that, had I been able to sprint for them, could have mathematically guaranteed me the jersey. I was so pissed at myself for being so complacent, yet again, and it ended up being a bit of a distraction towards the finish. I was not being a good goldfish. Realizing I couldn’t keep my head completely up my ass for the rest of the race, like an ostrich from the sand I pulled it out just enough to do the job as best I could as we entered leadout mode.
The finale ended up a chaotic affair from what I was told. We wanted to position well before the left-hand turn to the base with about two kilometers to go. I tried my best to move the team up, but would proceed to “plode” in all its forms right before the turn and peel off. It turned out the positioning didn’t matter a whole lot, as this “decisive” turn was still 2 kilometers out from the finish, which, as an uphill sprint, ended up being slow and uncontrolled. Without a lot of speed to keep a leadout train together, it was every man for himself going into the final sprint. Tyler and Scott were still able to nab 5th and 10th, respectively, but the bitter taste of the proverbial kombucha was still fresh in my mouth on account of my botched calculations and my lackluster support in the finale.
Stage 3: “Well…” *smiles then laughs* – Giggly contentment
Still kicking myself for not at least trying for the last KOM points on Stage 2, the first goal of the day was to make sure the one Swedish rider from Team IBT – Tripeak who had taken the previous day’s final points didn’t get any more. With two KOM sprints on offer for the third and final stage, theoretically, if he were to get in a move and win both the sprints, he would have the jersey based on place-countback. Accordingly, I devoted myself to ensuring he either didn’t get into a break, or, if he did, I was with him.
It must’ve seemed somewhat psychotic to him, but I swear I’ve never played a game of man-on-man defense quite like I did in the first 40 minutes of the race. He could have pulled over to the side of the road and rushed into the woods to doo doo Dumoulin-style in a bush and I would have dutifully followed him in there. Wherever he went, I went, and if he’s reading this, I apologize for being so annoying. As we were about to enter the first selective climb of the day (the one I launched on the day before to try to chase down the break), he came up to me and said, “I’m feeling the efforts from yesterday, so I’m not going to be contesting the points. Congratulations!” Though I never liked the idea of being handed a result, his declaration did give me closure and meant it was time to transition to the real goal of the day: trying to win another stage.
On paper, this third stage was the climbiest of them all in the hardest of ways. The second major ascent of the day was a 4.5-kilometer stair step with an average gradient of 6.8 percent, but with pitches going north of 10 percent on a regular basis. It was an insanely hard effort, driven largely by Team Voralberg and Team Coop – Repsol, the former of which still had a chance at the overall. Much like the aftermath of eating gas station sushi, the ejection process was violent, with only 30 or so riders making it over the top in the main group and the rest getting blown out the back.
I was extremely close to becoming a victim of the selection process, but conjured up just the right amount of energy to stick with my chase group and reunite with Hugo, Tyler, and Brendan. The next 70 kilometers were then truly a slog, as the jagged sawtooth profile could best be likened to the EKG image of an arrhythmia patient in the middle of a cardiac episode, culminating in the harsh Profitis Ilias climb one more time before the long descent back down to the coast and to the finish.
Virtually nothing happened during the period of the race, except for this tiny little incident that’s hardly worth mentioning in which two deer ABSOLUTELY ANNIHILATED a couple of riders right in front of me?!? Living in Montana – no I haven’t watched Yellowstone and no I don’t live anywhere near there, so stop asking me that – I have learned to scan the hillsides for deer as I’m riding along since they are everywhere and make no bones about bouncing into the road and right into your path of travel, but it has never been something I have actively thought in a race about until this one. On one of the slight downhills after a roller, I was sitting somewhere around 8th wheel, with several riders from Team Coop – Repsol setting pace for their GC leader, when suddenly I see two tan blobs barreling down the side of the hill to our right and t-bone the two riders on the end of the train right in front of me in quick succession. These weren’t little things either; these suckers had full 10-point racks on them. It was a horrifying sight, and it’s one of those moments that makes you question what it is exactly that we’re doing out here. Two dudes were splayed on the ground yelling and screaming in pain because they just got taken out by the animal equivalent of a full-grown human on a scooter and we all just kept riding because that’s the gig. It’s a part of the sport I truly hate, and I wish I could stop to make sure anybody who crashes in front of me is okay, but that wouldn’t be too practical, and that’s why races are required to have medical staff.
The race rhythm, insanely, was established quickly again. A couple of flyers went here and there, but nothing stuck until Brendan countered a move by Voralberg’s GC rider with about five kilometers to go until the base of the last climb of the race. He quickly gained time and had about 45 seconds on the group when they hit the uphill. I tried my best to string things out and simplify the entry to the climb for Tyler and Hugo, but I was spent, and pulled off immediately when we hit the base. They motored past, and that was that for me.
From what I gathered from the three riders up ahead, Brendan was caught on the climb and was gapped going over the top, as were the other two, but the loooooooong descent and coastal run-in meant they were able to regroup. Tyler, Brendan, and Hugo attacked several times to try and get a move to go clear, and eventually, Tyler got clear with two other riders who rotated all the way to the finish. Tyler would open up his sprint for the win, but, according to him, he was caught by a charging chase group that had brought back the late escapees with less than 50 meters to go. Tyler finished 3rd on the day, with Brendan right behind in 4th, the two of them moving up to 7th and 8th, respectively, in the GC. I crossed the line almost 10 minutes down from the group, having limped up the final climb and found some company to help pace the last hour of the race. I would learn that the casualties from the deer collision were okay save for a lot of abrasions, and hadn’t, in fact, been impaled, thank goodness.
All things told, I finished out the week happy for myself and the program. We came away with two wins, multiple top-tens from multiple different riders, and an intermediate points competition jersey to boot. On top of all of that, my Dad, still fresh into his retirement, made his way out to Greece, using the race as an excuse to vacation on the island. He spectated and cheered during every stage, and was able to watch me stand on the podium with the other competitors and slide on a jersey every day.
It’s special, as a bike racer, to have a parent there to watch you do it, as it makes you feel like you can attach a substantive presence to your rather nebulous descriptions of the job of riding and racing a bike. While performances can be seen and the results read from a sheet, the extent of the emotional volatility a rider may feel as they ply their niche trade in front of the many or the few can often go unseen. If we circle back and look to Brittany broski before internet virality allowed her to strike it big, we just see a woman chatting to herself alone in her room as she tries something new and different. But clearly, a lot of people found something meaningful, relatable, and joyful in her silliness, and perhaps were encouraged to try something new themselves as a consequence. My hope with these rookie reports is similar. I have no interest in becoming an internet celebrity on account of being turned into a meme, as that sounds truly awful and my absolute nightmare, but rather, in my own journey of exploring the new and the unknown, my only wish is that someone – at least one person? – finds something in all this word vomit that I’m spewing onto these digital pages that motivates them to go try something novel themselves. Sure, you may find the process of doing so will leave you second-guessing your decision-making at times, much like me and Ms. Broski, but it could also leave you giggling and giddy. And I think that the possibility of the latter makes anything worth an attempt.
The team is back on the road starting this week as we kick off the American spring stage race block heading into our National Championships, which are much earlier this year on account of the Olympics. We’ve got high expectations for ourselves in the next couple of races at the Redlands Bicycles Classic and The Tour of the Gila, so follow along and keep an eye out for more rookie reports in the coming months!
What did you think of this story?