Gringo Diaries: From chaotic to full-on s%&$#! show

(Editor’s Note: Josh Liberles (who you may recall from his recent story about training in Maui) is a Portland, Oregon-based road racer. He is racing in the Vuelta Independencia, a 10-stage race in the Dominican Republic and will be providing VeloNews.com readers with periodic updates.)

By Josh Liberles

There’s nothing like a double-race day one week into a stage race to really zap your legs. The morning’s stage would take us from La Vega back down to Santo Domingo and sea level. Early, steep rollers caused a split and a group of 20 riders separated themselves off of the front. My 18-year-old teammate Pavel Stulchik (Ten Speed Drive) made that split, but a hole in the road took him down, trashed both of his wheels and ended his stage race. We all had the feeling that it was only a matter of time before the crashes visited our team too, but we’re glad that Pavel bounced up with little more than minor road rash.

I got into an eight-man chase group, fueled by four guys from the Tour de Quebec team. We hung between the leaders and the peloton for the second half of the stage. Rotating through in a fast-moving, motivated group felt great — for the most part, we worked smoothly, and kept the pace pinned high. Every village we passed through had hundreds of boisterous fans lining the street and someone, inevitably, would douse us with a bucket of cool water, to take the edge off of the day’s intense heat.

Behind, the yellow jersey proved to be too much of a burden for Colombian rider Jose Flobo Pena and his Mauricio Baez teammates. After some half-hearted chasing, they realized that they didn’t have the firepower left to bring the leaders back and seemed to concede the race. Dominican Augusto Sanchez (Aro & Pedal) would pick up the dropped reins, using the breakaway to move him into the lead.

It was towards the end of the race that things started to go awry. Dominican rider Jordalis Hernandez (Asocipe-Moca), who sat on the back of our group for almost the entire duration of the breakaway, started pulling through too hard, then started attacking. Not long after, as we approached 8k to go, we started riding through full-on, bumper-to-bumper Santo Domingo traffic. It was pure bike messenger tactics as we wove through the swirling gridlock at full speed, trying to maintain a gap on our pursuers and finish the damned stage. Mopeds here tend to perform the same traffic weaves we were — and I prayed that I didn’t slam into one as I scooted around a car on the way into town.

Finally, with about 1 1/2 km to go, we reached the race course finale, which had been successfully closed to cars. We were five minutes down on Eric Boily (Spidertech), who led the lead breakaway home, and four minutes ahead of the main, yellow jersey group. By the time the peloton hit the final stretch, the situations were reversed. They had clear sailing until 1 1.2 km to go, then had to contest with swarming traffic for their sprint. Any time gaps that opened up stood, and neither in my group nor in the yellow jersey’s group were the finishes neutralized.

Today’s race conditions one-upped the varied dangers we’ve encountered thus far. Keep in mind that this isn’t some local Podunk event — it’s sanctioned by the UCI, whose seal typically connotes a host of strict criteria and regulations. It’s mind-boggling that the UCI officials didn’t neutralize the race with a potentially life-threatening finale like today’s. For this 31 year-old event, which has both grown and improved significantly in the past several years, to maintain its UCI designation as part of the America Tour, sketchy finishes like today’s will need to be the first things to be rectified.

ETAPA 6B – Follow it with Threshold

If your idea of the perfect chaser for an intense, hot 115-km morning race is turning yourself inside-out for a 10km time trial in the afternoon, then day six of the Vuelta Independencia is for you. Unfortunately, my afternoon quickly became less about the race, and more about the guagua, or privately-run bus, that side-swiped me on the way to the race course. Before I knew what had happened, I was standing in the middle of the street less than two blocks from my hotel with my bike on the ground, the front wheel crushed underneath the bus, and my time trial saddle in my hand, detached from its rails which were still attached to the seat post.

The physical stress of the races was more than enough; the mental and emotional stress caused by the event’s disorganization and the dangerous elements that surrounded it were quickly piling up — and I was fried. I grabbed my road saddle and seat post from the hotel, crammed everything into the backseat of the team car and headed off to the race.

Considering all of the factors, and that this was the eighth race in six days, I turned in a respectable effort on the 10.4 km, out-and-back course along the Caribbean. I raced with a PowerTap power meter and put out solid threshold numbers — not as high as I’d typically see when fresh for such a short duration, but good enough to push my road bike with clip-ons and aero wheels through the wind to 21st place on the day, at 14:12.

The winner, Adan Pierzga (Gillette Fusion Guadaloupe), turned a superhuman 12:27, four seconds ahead of Alexander Gonzalez (VCSM-Santiago) and 16 seconds better than Bruno Langlois (Spidertech). The yellow jersey holder Augusto Sanchez (Aro & Pedal) was only 26 seconds off of the leader’s pace and maintained his overall lead over Langlois by 1:51 as we head into the final two stages.

FILED UNDER: News / Race Report / Road TAGS: Vuelta Independencia