HEY! You're takling about STERLING!!!
I was there today doing the PRO,1,2. As some of you may remember, I fractured my hand two and a half weeks ago, and didn't get a bike untill thursday, so I'm severly undertrained, and that race today was a shock to my system. Plus there were 2 Prime Aliance riders, 2 7-UP riders, 3 West Virginia Riders, 1 Navigators, and 5 Sportsbook.com riders. Plus all the elite-amateur teams. A LOT OF STRONG GUYS! Anyway, I got kicked around pretty badly... oh well. We had to do ten laps.
Flyfisher: To put some things in perspective, the hills today were not that big, but that start finish climb WAS unusually steep. You won't encounter many climbs that are that sharp, most stuff is more gradual like the seccond climb on the course. Next week at SUNAPEE (which is what you're talking about right?) there isn't anything nearly as steep as that start finish climb, but there are climbs which are significantly longer than anything that was on the course today. Plus, at Sunapee, the finish is at the top of a reasonable sized climb -- longer than anything you saw today. I don't mean to be discouraging, Sunapee is a great race that's a lot of fun, just letting you know. Anyway, it's going to take a lot of practice climbing hard to get better at climbing. Most of the roads in the Sunapee race are pretty major -- it's not as technical a race as today's, and climbs, although longer and more frequent, are not too steep. I'll see you there!
BTW, what team are you on? I ride for Fuji-UPMC.
- Maurizio