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Big Cottonwood Hill Climb |
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Written by Tim White
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Thursday, 28 August 2008 |
Big Cottonwood Hill Climb
Salt Lake City, UT
July 12th, 2008
 The Porcupine Hill Climb up Big Cottonwood Canyon is one of the 2 or 3 road races I sign up for each year. Its close by, it ascends a beautiful canyon, and the start is all of about 2 miles from my house. Having a breakfast catered by Porcupine Pub and Grille at the finish line doesn’t hurt either.
 The racecourse climbs 3800 vertical feet over 14.7 miles. We started off into a strong headwind that kept the breakaways to a minimum. The lead pack didn’t get splintered until the Storm Mountain section (probably the steepest of the race) when two riders got away. I thought my group would reel them in by the top of the climb, but when they kept opening a gap, I jumped and went after them. I consider my strength in the saddle to be my climbing, and my weakness to be riding into a headwind and this effort had me trying to find a balance between the two. I spent a while chasing them, only to get reeled back in by the pack I had left. There were 4 or 5 of us together now, and I tried to rally the group to work together and chase the leaders. The group had one holdout on the team effort, but we were able to put down a pretty good pace for the rest of the race.
I never did catch the two leaders, and got 2nd in the group sprint from the pack I rode with while we avoided having any other racers catch us. I ended up in first place in the Citizen’s 40-49 category and was awarded a trophy consisting of a half-gallon jug with unlimited free refills of a beverage of my choice for the remainder of the month at the Porcupine Pub and Grille.
Full results and photos can be found here.
Tim
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