by Charly Vives
Last Sunday August 15th, was held the Classique Montr̩al РQu̩bec, the longest one day classic in North America. I was happy to be back and was hoping to redeem myself from my 2 flats in 20km last year. However, I knew that without the support of my SpiderTech teamates, I will need a mix of : Fitness, luck and good race reading.
Race start fast as usual with a tailwind – cross wind. A small break of 8 guys went up the road, but since we were going at 48-52 km/h I thought it was better for me to stay in the pack.
A bit after Trois-Rivières, a group of 10 went up the road with 3 Garneau (including last year winner Perron) and Josh Dillon (Bikereg.com) I took a bet not following the move. I though it was too far from the finish (130km to go). I stressed out a bit when I heard the gap was 2 minutes. I went up front with Rocky Moutain and Ride with Rendall to bring back the move. We came back with 25km and I tried to get a break going, but no success. We went hard in the last climb and were about 20 guys at the top with 5km to the finish.
Since I’ve been doing a lot of track training lately, I was waiting for a sprint or a late move.
Passing by the finishing line with 3k to go, Passeron (Garneau) and Goodfellow (Bikereg) rolled to the front and got a 50m gap. I was sitting in 10th wheel at that time, but it was too late. Since I was alone in the race, it wasn’t really my job to bring back those 2 guys. I had a decision to make though : bridging to the break and hope I will still have good legs for a sprint or hope a team will bring it back. I went with option #2 and it turned out to be the wrong one.
I took the field sprint for 3rd.
In the end, it was a great day. I had a good result and I saw that the form is good heading into next week Track Nationals.
