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From Mark: "Derek and I both raced the cat 4-5 group of the High Uintas. This is a race that Derek also won last year on a 45 mile solo breakaway. The profile of the race is the first 30 miles gives you about 4500 feet of elevation gain. Derek and I pushed the pace pretty hard up the first 25 miles taking a lot of time on the front in the hopes of splintering the group but to my surprise there were quite a few of the 45 guys that stuck with the pace. At that point it was in my 190 lbs interest to ease up and catch my breath for the kick up in grade but I think we may have waited a bit too long. The grade kicked up and one small guy attacked and put a 1:20 lead on the rest of the pack with about 2 miles to go on the climb. I was dying and even with a little push from "Slaughterhouse" I couldn't hold to my redline any longer and to my great frustration I popped with about 1.5 miles to go on the climb. I had the next 15 miles descending by myself to reflect on rule number 5 and try to catch some of the approximately 25 guys in front of me. I caught a few guys who were happy to work together to try and make up lost ground. The group grew as we reeled other riders in. I got to one guy in our group and asked him how many guys were out front and he was very vague about it and when he came to the front to take his turn in the rotation he would slow the pace from about 32 miles per hour down to about 26 miles per hour which was his strategy to prevent us from catching his team mate. I caught onto his strategy and basically just skipped him in the rotation. We caught his team mate and then I asked him the same question on how many were out in front and what the time gap was. Unfortunately I didn't know how many were still out and they led me to believe there might have been 15 or 20 guys still. On the final stretch when I still thought we had a couple of miles to go the one guy who was slowing the pace to 26 sprinted off the front. I jumped out to catch him and two other guys came including his team mate. As we rotated his bloody team mate blocked me and slowed the chase. Unfortunately we were about 500 meters from the finish and not 2 miles. I was pretty bent that those two guys let me do so much work to chase down other racers and benefited by about 10 overall positions due to the work I did and then blocked me at the end but I guess that's racing and I need to learn not to trust any of the other bastards around me. I finished in 8th place and due to not quite 50 participants I got a goose egg on upgrade points!
...basically when I was dying up the climb at 180 bpm heart rate Derek was chatting it up with another guy beside me and putting his hand on my back giving me a little boost. He summited with a small group and they quickly caught the solo breakaway climber and spat him out the back. They worked together for the remainder of the race with Derek doing his usual high percentage of work out front and still had enough in the tank to win the final sprint and take another Zanconato win for the season!!
Derek also got his upgrade to Cat 3 with this win. Way to go Slaughterhouse! You set an impressive standard my friend. It was a pleasure racing with you - while it lasted :)"
