Don't think he intended it to be posted on the interwebs, but it's too cool to race & ride with such a guy and not share his stories, so here it is:

_email from 02-11-10________________________________
Those great race reports from Boulevard RR have made me nostalgic for the time when I could actually compete on a course like that. It may be hard for those of you who have climbed with me to believe, there was once a time when I could actually go up hill pretty well.


In mid-April of 1978, in Globe, Arizona, there was a qualifying race for the Jr. National Team tryouts which were to take place in Colorado Springs the following month. Dozens of 16-18 year old Juniors came from as far away as Nor Cal, Colorado & New Mexico to compete. One kid named Greg came all the way down from Reno, Nevada. Junior races were huge in those days.

Early on (about 20 miles into the 70 mile RR) in the race some strong riders, including Thurlow Rogers, Bob Bergdahl, Brian Smith, future Olympic RR Champ Alexi Grewal, & future National Road Race Champ Steve Wood and I formed a break. Smith was an “Intermediate” rider (the term used in those days to describe 13-15 yr old jrs) and was one of the most naturally talented riders I’ve ever known. Unfortunately, Brian trained about 400+ miles a week at the age of 14 and quickly burnt out before he was even 16.

As we began the long (8 miles?) climb, Brian’s brother who was in a follow car, began shouting “Come on Brian, come on Brian!” and Brian just turned around and yelled “shut up”. His brother wouldn’t let up and the “come on Brian”s and the “shut up!”s continued until Brian lost concentration and got dropped.

As I recall, at about that time, Steve Wood attacked and got away from us. About a mile up the climb the road turned to give us a view back down the hill at the road below. We could see a single rider away from the pack chasing us. We all knew who it had to be. … A few moments later, Thurlow attacked and put out a pace that none of us could match (not much has changed, right?).

In what seemed like just a few minutes, that lone rider, Greg Lemond, had caught up to us. The guy didn’t even seem winded as he came by us in his big chainring cheerfully asking who was up the road. I vividly remember Bergdahl looking at me and shaking his head as we continued in our small chainrings and marveled at how much stronger Lemond was than the rest of us.

About half way up the climb Grewal blew up, so it was just me and Bergdahl left to fight it out for 4th place. I had been told that after the summit it was a short decent to the finish line so with the summit in sight I attacked. That “short” decent ended up being 7 miles of downhill and then rollers. At every turn I expected to see the line and each time my heart sank to see that I was nowhere close. I would never have pulled that move if I thought I would have had to stay away from Bob for 7 miles.

Lemond never did catch Thurlow. Wood ended up winning the race…I’m not exactly sure of the details but the most likely scenario is that Thurlow caught him on the climb and Wood outsprinted him at the line.
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