Rocky Mountain Roubaix

This last weekend we headed out to Missoula for the Rocky Mountain Roubaix - one of our favorite road events of the early season. Mostly because it's a really fast, fun course, but also because it's well within what we would consider a reasonable drive for a good race.



I decided that I wanted to race this year's event with the Men Cat 3's, but what I didn't know until a week or so before the race is that this particular promoter had decided to group the Men 1/2/3's all together. So, that meant that I would be racing with all those guys - about 8 of which are part of the Vertical Earth Cat 2 team.



It was an excellent opportunity for me to ride in a larger, faster pack, and by racing with the men, I would get a 60 mile race instead of the 30 mile race that was scheduled for the women's field. We probably started with about 50 or 60 guys in that pack - and little ol' me - several of which succumbed to flat tires from the Roubaix nature of the course. Luckily, Mike was looking out for me, and borrowed Tommy's sweet tubeless Shimano wheels for me to use. They proved to be pretty much bomb-proof (Thanks, Tommy!!!!!).

As the official Montana Cross website reported, "Today's race had great weather, and awesome racing. The 1,2,3 race was filled with attacks. Vertical Earth brought a full compliment of riders. They animated the race all day, and eventually took the win with Erik Anderson. He won out of a small group comprised of Clint Muhlfeld, Josh Tack, and one other rider (?). The group got away on the 4th lap and never looked back. GAS chased hard but was unable to the close the gap. As usual, flats were prevelant. There were lots of good performances. I thought Vertical Earth as a team rode a solid tactical event. One of the youngest riders in the bunch, Gabe from Vertical Earth took the cat 3 prize." And I was there! I have to admit, I am pretty damn proud of my performance - I used every opportunity to position myself the best way I could in this pack of extremely strong GUYS - I hung on in the hills, hung on for the attacks. That is, until about 9 or 10 miles from the finish. I got caught out on the final hill, and just couldn't close the gap at about the same time that Erik decided to attack and open up a small gap that the pack tried to shut down. I just couldn't pull it back, and got popped. I ended up riding in with one other Cat 3, and ended up placing 7th out of the 14 3's that finished. I'm not sure where I finished overall with the 1/2/3's, but it wasn't too far behind. Overall, I'm stoked that I was able to race with those guys and perform as well as I did.

After the race, we all were standing around chatting, and we decided that Gabe got the unofficial VE "ride of the day" award, with Erik a close second for his commanding win. After a few more minutes, Jason said, "Wait! I think Jenni gets the ride of the day!" He's got lots of riding friends in Montana, and he told me that after the race he had a ton of guys come up to him saying, "Dude, who was that chick riding with us?! That was bad ass!!!"

Later that night, Mike told me, "That was pretty cool - riding with you. I kept expecting to see you gone after attack after attack after attack... but I would look over and see you still there, looking great!"

That just makes it ALL worth it..........