Montreal-Quebec wrap-up

Well this year's Montreal-Quebec is over. I've had some sleep and thougth we should recap the day. We tried something unique yesterday to try to create a bit of a visitor experience on the website, but there is also a racing story to tell.

There is a bit of a special dynamic in the bunch for Montreal-Quebec. The field is a mix of pro1/2 riders and other categories, mostly masters A/B. The field size is 200(+) riders. Some guys are there to win, some are there simply for the experience of riding 250kms in a race. Historically this has often meant that the guys there to 'race' try to attack early and often to shed the 'rif-raf'.

Amongst the teams and individuals there to 'race' the mix of the break has to be right for it to stay away. This year the right mix established itself after about 70kms of racing --before the mid-way sprint at Trois Rivieres. The b,reak included two VW's, three Gypco, 2-3 Premier Techs, one Ital, two from Jet Fuel Sympatico, one Espoir Laval, two from Target Training -- including former Saeco Pro and Giro d'Italia rider Justin Spinelli-- and a strongman or two like Peter Morse riding for Pavan.

Prior to the break establishing itself, Dave and I weren't quite sure what was going on... In the caravan car you normally have a race radio and get minute by minute updates from the chief commissaire's car and instructions for the caravan. Well our race radio didn't work. The power light was on, but no audio came out of it. We were effectively blind. We had spot 12 in the caravan order, which turned out to be just behind spot 9 of John Harris in the ItalPasta Transport Belmire team car. While the caravan commissaire tried to help us with our radio, we would periodically slip up beside John Harris to get an update. His radio didn't seem to work quite so well either, but he was getting more information than us because we no longer had a radio at all.

Before passing the bunch to move up to break, we fed the guys once, as Zach to up about 7 fresh bottles. Then it was up to the break to service Joe and Mark. We had Buck's dad John working roadside feeding and we figured the boys in the bunch--Andrew, Zach, Josh and Buck--would be OK. So, Dave, Bill and I moved up behind the break. At the second feed the gap from the break to the main field was 4+ minutes and we decided the team's best shot was between Mark and Joe in the break and we should remain there, to service them. This might have been a bit of a mistake, as the final roadside feed was still 110kms to the finish, leaving the guys in the bunch to be potentially dehydrated if the bunch or a splinter group made it back to the break.

This didn't happen however, and the remnants of the original break played out the race for the win. Dominique Rollin was particularily impressive when he started attacking with about 20km to go. Dom attacked on the final highway roller on the 148 before the race dips down southward on the country roads beside the river. The final big highway roller is sort of a double roller and Dom pressed his attack over both. Alex Lavelle, Eaneas Feare and Pete Morse were able to react fairly quickly to Dom's move. Joe was gapped, but struggled back with Chris Fredrick. Mark Pozniak was gapped off right away after Dom's move. We were now pulling for Joe. In the end Joe was a bit cooked and trailed in 6th from the front 6 who made the final split. Dom counter attacked himself almost immediately after Joe and Chris made the junction. Dom went again on the decent off the 148 highway down to the country roads in St. Augustine. He maintained a small gap over the steep final climb and increased his lead on the finish circuit around the Louis Garneau Factory HQ.

What worked and what didn't
For us this race was also a test of some of the gadgets and gizmos we have to create content on the website. We wanted to see if we could create a unique and interesting live update experience with a camera phone. We had some glitches with that; 1) we couldn't tag the photos with a quick text update--and thumb typing in a moving car is a pain. 2) it is a challenge to split the focus a bit between doing the tasks involved to support the guys and create good content. 3) the camera phone photos are a bit blurry. 4) the camera phone battery died with 30km to go in the race, kind of the most important part. 5) it was beyond our control, but not having a functioning race radio really impeded our ability to give meaningful updates, as we were not getting information from the commissaires. We were able to phone Matt who was writing updates on Pedal and I think the synchronization of the three websites: ours, buzznet and pedal created a neat story.

Personally I really liked Dave's lo-tech idea to hand write updates on a clipboard and photo-blog those up to the feed. I actually thought that was really cool. It reminded me of the Bob Dylan video... I think off the basement tapes album where he stands in front of the camera with an armfull of signboards with lyrics on them, dropping them one by one as song plays.

We are going to try to work out some glitches in the 'system' and do a similar thing for the San Francisco GP in early September. Thanks to all those who followed our feed.

see also
» pedalmag.com Montreal-Quebec story
» Montreal-Quebec full results
» The team's buzznet photo story