Race Report: Purgatory Road Race

Here is Dan’s report from his first 3’s race at Purgatory:

Some days you feel like you can take on the whole peloton, other days you just hope that you aren’t dropped and Purgatory was one of the latter. My legs were heavy, the course was not suited well to me and it was my first race as a Cat 3. Well the race started out eventful at least. Grinta was the largest team there and they controlled the entire race. It started with an attack as soon as we were released from neutral and never let up with attacks being rotated through their team. Needless to say, they owned that race. My own attacks always fell short, either pulling the field or resulting in a break that was quickly brought back.

It wasn’t until the final 5 miles that something worked. I made an attempt to bridge t two riders up the road I thought were in our field only to find out they were from a different field. My move prompted a real break to form though and before I knew it there were three of us rolling towards the final climb together. Me , Bryan McGyll, and Johan Gibcus. The final climb was the decider, with Bryan taking off from the start and me and Johan leapfrogging each other up until the final 500m of the race where he finally edged out over me leaving me in 3rd place.