Cuts-Ville

This weekend marks the return of the Killington Stage Race in scenic Vermont. Padraig already wrote about it back in the fall, and now the race is here. The KSR began the year I started racing with a license, 1987. That year it was an omnium; you could enter each race individually. I went out to the big-money Tour of Schenectady and then only did the final day on the course from Rutland to K1. I flatted. In the years after that, I raced it quite a few times as a Cat 3, and then in 1996 as a master. In those days the race was a full five days, always including a TT up the access road, a circuit race in Bridgewater, and a criterium in Rutland, along with two lengthy (and hilly) road stages. The Pro/Am always attracted strong teams. I don't think Armstrong ever did it, but I could be wrong. All the others did though, Hincapie, Hamilton, Knickman, Phinney etc. One year me, the Cronoman, and the rest of the Nashua Velo crew had a condo downstairs from Coors Light. They had Alexi Grewal and Mike Zanoli on the squad. At the crit, Grewal busted his ass to bring back a break and keep the field together for the sprint, but I guess Zanoli sat up. We heard them arguing about it, with Alexi really laying into him. Then furniture breaking, shit rumbling, and their D.S. Len Pettyjohn yelling "you didn't have to hit him Mike." Good times.

This year the race is back on a new weekend and in abbreviated three stage form. We'll do the same old circuit race, three laps of an 18 mile loop down in Bridgewater on Saturday. On Monday, the final day, they've laid out a 67 mile single loop road course that goes up 100 to 107, then over some big hills and a bit of dirt, and back to Rt 4 in Woodstock before returning to Killington. The finish is up East Mountain Road, aka Bear Mountain, which climbs 1100 feet in just over two miles. It is pretty brutal. And you're not done at that point; you still have to go over the rollers through the condos and up the last part of the access road to the K1 base lodge. That is going to be G.C. right there.

In the middle, the meat of the sandwich, we have the real subject of this post, the new 11 mile, fairly flat time trial. The start is at the Long Trail Brewery on Route 4. Heading west, it's a very slight but steady uphill past the gondola and then across the ever-windswept Sherburne Flats. The finish is in the actual village of Killington, which is a tiny town way at the base of the mountain. Sounds simple right? The news here, for some anyway, is that a 20% time cut will be enforced. Huh?

Back in the day at the old KSR, the uphill TT was always the first day. In a prologue, time cuts do not apply. But one year they called it "Stage One" and in the pro-am Knickman went sub ten minutes. Now 12 minutes was actually a rockin' good pace on this beast of a course (3.6 miles with a healthy elevation gain of around 1000+ feet). A large number of amateurs in the pro-am were not this fast, and were cut, thank you very much for your $120 entry fee, hope you enjoyed your 3.6 miles at Killington. The next day, the officials relented and decided not to enforce the cut, but by then most of these guys had been in a state of shock/denial/WTF?/let's get hammered for 24 hours, and either chose not to start the circuit race or got shelled out of it. The damage had been done.

In the lowly Cat 3 and other fields, this was never an issue that I recall, at least not for me. Fast forward to 2010. I'm in the 40-49, as are my team mates, some of whom do not time trial quite as well as I do. And so are guys like Jonny Bold and Fred Thomas, monsters who can TT at speeds approaching those of the young pros. In fact, just this past Sunday, I competed in a time trial up in Maine, the Freeport LL Bean Time Trial, part of the Maine Time Trial Series. Mr Thomas was second overall, with an average speed of over 28 mph, which was 12.6% faster than me. So I would survive a 20% time cut, but shit, I'm supposed to be a good time trialist.

Don't get me wrong; I hope they enforce the cut. It's only fair. So long as my team mates all make it... The big guys have to haul their carcasses over the mountains, so why shouldn't the little guys have to man up in the TT? But in this day of "racers as consumers" I can hear the whining now from those who don't make it. And since the fields did not all fill, I won't be surprised if everyone is allowed to start on Monday, regardless of their TT time. They won't want to scare off potential entrants for next year. Remember what happens when you make races too hard... I'm tired, time for bed, thanks for reading.