Tommy Nankervis

Dahlonega Stage Race…

// August 23rd, 2007 // A Day Down Under

… Means too many hills!

This past weekend we raced the Gold Diggers Stage race, Georgia Cup. This is by far the hardest local race i have ever done, if you could call it that! Georgia Cups aren’t really raced by GA riders only, but more like every state surrounding GA too, which makes for great racing! People who live in Georgia and ride bikes know the 3-gap, and 6-gap rides, and that they are hard. This race had a time trial up a seven-plus kilometer climb, then a relatively rolling circuit race, followed the next day by the 3-gap ride, in reverse, twice. The catch there was we did the longest climb three times, as we started at the bottom of it, and finished atop it, third time up! We figured it was roughly 11km up, maybe a bit more, each lap. This was the long climb, and then we had a couple of other decent ones too, like Wolf Pen, which was about 3-4km up, then a screaming descent, then straight up the next climb, which was about 5 km!

Gravity doesn’t exactly allow me to sprint uphill too fast, so this race had my work cut out for me! The time trial went well, Thad, the undefeated time trial king of 2007, continued on form, and racked up win number 75, of something ridiculous! I came in 5th in that one. The afternoon circuit race had Tim the toolman take the honours, after breaking away with half a lap to go with one other dude. There were two guys chasing them, and i won the sprint for 5th. Thad held onto the leaders jersey too, which was nice, and everything was cruising along as planned.

The next day was the feared 3-gap race, and the 5am wake-up didn’t make it any more exciting! To cut a long story short, as i am returning to this post after slacking it for 2 weeks, we lost the lead on the final day. Some dude broke away out of the holes, and put 4 minutes into us over the day. Thad put in a great ride to come second in the stage, and he got second on GC too. I was a bit of a way back, in eighth place, and that was my finishing GC spot too. It was a big weekend of racing really, and i feel it helped get the legs into gear for Downer’s Grove.

Here is a photo of our girlfriends in the feed zone; Tim’s girlfriend Julie in front, my hot girlfriend Keally behind her, and Thad’s Dixie at the back! Thanks to Oldie Dave for the picture, and thanks to the girls for feeding!

Not that much of a good post, but i am about to do a better one now!

Catch ya soon!