For 2014 the Canadian Road National Championships was back in lac Megantic, this year doing a very similar course to 2012, which was the first time I rode a national championship.  The route consisted of a 20km rolling ride out to a 15km circuit that had a steep, 2km climb on it which we would do 9 times before heading back to Lac Megantic for the finish which was on a short uphill drag.  The race distance including the neutral start is about 180km, with 3100m of climbing.

I had a pretty good race.  I felt comfortable rolling out, kept my position in the peleton without too much effort.  The world tour guys went balls to the wall the first time up the climb.  Towards the end of the first lap I noticed my rear tire was almost completely flat going through the corners.  On the hill I called out for a wheel, but the commisair said my team car wasn’t available, I’d have to take neutral.  This was fine; I kept riding, trying to communicate that I’d like to change the wheel where the climb flattens out, which almost worked out, the guy pulled over with a rear wheel ready at about 100m from the end of the climb.  I got a really fast change, and was didn’t have too much of a gap to close.  A Jelly belly rider worked with me, and I got back on the group by the end of the feed zone.  By this point a select group had gone, so I was in the second group on the road.  For the next few laps I kept myself in position for the climbs, but also conserving energy as much as possible, because it was still a long way to go.

Over the next few laps the group would sometimes cooperate, sometimes we’d attack each other, moves inevitably got pulled back, and the group slowly shrunk each time over the hill.  Kevin got in two separate moves which stayed away for a while, but both times the gap never got big enough to be out of sight, and both moves came back on the climb.  I had been experiencing some stomach problems that started early in the race but never got too bad that I couldn’t pedal.  I didn’t spend much time in the drops as this made it worse.  The last time up the hill Nigel Ellisay drove the pace from the bottom, and it definitely hurt, but I never had any real difficulty holding wheels.  After the descent there were 7 riders left, 5 of whom were u23.  We’d heard that there were only 3 u23s up the road, and at least 1 of them was within 2 minutes.  From the feed zone on the last lap the group worked well together, keeping a steady pace line, and by the time we got to 15km to go we had caught Chris Dahl and Bruce Birds’ group, and a bit further down the road we caught Stuart White.  The group stopped cooperating when we caught Stuart (at 13 or 14km to go), as there were only 3 non-u23s in a group of 11.  Bruce Bird took advantage of this and rolled off the front with 10km to go, and no one followed.  He would stay just ahead of us until the finish.

Will Elliot tried a couple of attacks from a distance, but eventually got a gap with 3km to go, as the rest of us were cat and mousing.  I was pretty tired, and I knew I had a very small number of accelerations left in me, and I think the rest of the group was in the same boat.  Chris Dahl attacked before the final descent at 1km to go, and I sat on the top tube on his wheel.  The momentum carried us to 500m to go, and past Will.  As the remaining riders started to accelerate for the uphill sprint, I was cooked.  I put my head down and ground it out to the finish line, and I managed to hang on to the back of the group as they sprinted.  The effort was good for 7th in u23 and 16th overall (albeit more than 17 minutes behind Svein Tuft).  For a race with nice weather and fairly few flats, it had a huge attrition rate, 39 finishers, 89 DNF.

Everyone was pretty tired when we got back to the cottage on Trout Lake that night and we slowly made dinner and swam in the lake.  To cap off the day the team spent the evening around a campfire toasting marshmallows and making smores.