Reflecting on the ULCER

This year's ULCER hosted a team time trial as it did last year. Here's my perception of the race.

We begin this time trial in a bunch start. I suppose this makes it easier, and it is possible there just isn't enough time in an hour to start the number of teams there were signed up. At first I thought this would just turn into a road race instead of a team time trial. It turned out to be a good mix of road racing and time trialing; I'm glad I was wrong.

As usual a group of 50+ people in a small group can cause some scary moments. I heard of a crash not too far behind us, and there was a near crash directly in front of me involving a team member which did a phenomenal job staying upright. The person in front of him swerved and caught his front wheel, he reacted and gained control, we scattered and I believe all stayed rubber-side down. Good stuff.

The rough roads at the beginning of this course don't help either. Plenty of potholes cause plenty of sketchy riding, even though the roads were marked extremely well. At least I didn't lose a water bottle due to road conditions this time, as happened in my last two races. I hear there is a chance the ULCER will go to the west of Utah lake and through Eureka next year; I hope that's the case. I really don't care for the course weaving around the little towns of Lehi, Springville, etc. Too many turns, too much traffic, too many stop lights and signs, and definitely too many road obstacles.

Once we got going as a team - after our 22 mile stop - we did extremely well. We caught the pack nearly at will, did it again at 44 miles, and just worked quite efficiently. Everyone ended up doing a great job, we worked as hard as we possibly could, we put on a killer chase at the very end, and we just barely missed the win in our category by 12 whole seconds. Rogers did a superb job, I mean superb, at chasing for the last section of the course. Turns out we were 3 minutes back from the overall win, that's amazing!

Overall a great day. A little annoying to be that close to the win, but we gave it all. We had great weather and great support!