Iceman was a blast! I did not mind at all that the big pros were a no-show this year. Mommy nature was good to us. Just a bit nippy, but no snow or ice, man. I had a typical Herriman start, like 20th off the line, which forced me to work my way through traffic for the first 3 miles. Then without intending to do so, I found myself riding solo in 4th for a couple miles. I could see
Schouten and Matter like 30 sec. ahead and the field was just 8 sec behind. I thought, "I'm not gona do this the whole race". So I settled back into the field. Did a couple short attacks to try and excite the group but no one seemed willing to work.
Jesse Lalonde, on a single speed, was setting pace and made a good effort on a climb at about mile 7 which created our 3 man chase group. Russ Tiles, Jesse, and I rode together with Russ and I doing most of the work. It's hard to complain about Jesse on a single-speed for sitting in. Of course, he did the same thing to me last year. Russ ended up bonking with about 4 miles to go and then with about 3 miles to go I got a little gap on Jesse. Cool. But then Jesse came back with
Randy Laprairie on his wheel. Dang. I pulled over to force Randy and Jesse to the front. After my pre-ride the day before I knew we were close to the finish and I was gona make my move down the last hill before the finish maze. And then suddenly the course made an unexpected hard right turn into a tight single-track section. Somehow I missed that in my pre-ride. We dumped out of that and then up an unexpected steep climb. Crap. Oh well. We maintained our positions from there and at the end I just decided to enjoy all the cheers as I rolled in 6th. Had I been the first guy into that tight single-track section the final result could have definitely been the same as the twisty maze at the end would probably have been my undoing. Either way it was an unbelievable result for me.
A top 10 at Iceman. Whoo Hoo!
