Patterson Pass Road Race Report

The Patterson Pass Road Race course is windy, hilly, and long. Depending on your category it’s 2-4 laps around a 23 mile loop. Each loop has two good sized climbs which add up to a little more than 2000ft of vertical per lap. The first climb in the lap is the larger of the two and gets really steep at the top. Unfortunately for climbers, it’s also straight into a roaring head wind. Always. It’s a wind farm. Because of this the attacks usually go on the smaller climb. Either way, I’ve always thought it was a good course for a breakaway because if you can get any kind of gap on the hills the tailwind is so strong on the back of the course that everyone is just spinning out. 

Our race was to be 4 laps with a pretty stacked field. Marc Pro-Strava, Mike’s Bikes, and Airgas all had good showings. Right from the gun the pace was fast as it looked like there were a few teams trying to get an early break off the front. I was tail gunning so I can’t really say who. After a bit the attacks and counters stopped so I thought I’d give it a go. Fortunately, I was joined by Griffin Easter from Airgas (strong boy) and we worked really well together for a couple of laps to develop a good 2-3minute lead on the field. On the second to last trip up the big climb Griffin lost the wheel a bit and so I was on my own from there. 

I spent most of the last two laps singing “Workin’ at the Carwash Blues” to myself and thinking about how terrible it was going to be when the pack swallowed me back up. Turns out that rocking the funk while scared makes you ride bikes pretty fast. In the end I was able to hang onto my lead and get my biggest win to date.

Congrats, to Kevin Gottlieb of Airgas (2^nd) and Jacob Albrecht of Whole Athlete Specialized (3^rd) for rounding out the podium.  Those two are going to be terrors at any race they show up to.