USANA’s Daniel Carruthers: Tour of Luzon (Days 8 & 9)

Editor’s Note: Thank you for your patience. We delayed the final postings until after the Las Vegas Celebration. USANA-sponsored cyclist Daniel Carruthers raced in the Tour of Luzon, a multi-stage cycling race in the Philippines. Daniel agreed to share his thoughts throughout the race with What’s Up, USANA? readers. Please also visit his Web site www.danielcarruthers.com for additional information and follow him on Twitter @BikeDan. If you have questions for Daniel you’d like answered on the blog, please send them here.

Day 8
This stage was held in the Army Compound area close to the Subic International Raceway. It consisted of 10 laps on a 10km circuit with a sharp 1.5km, 12% hill climb to sprint over each lap.

My goal during this stage was to survive as long as possible in the main bunch as I knew the climb would be a tough one for me to get over. I missed the breakaway that went after the 4th time over the climb, but stayed with the main group until it split again with several laps remaining. With three laps to go, I went with a Filipino that attacked and we got a good gap on bunch I was in. I was able to climb reasonably strongly and keep the lead, but I was caught at the top of the climb with two laps remaining.

On the penultimate lap, I was dropped. Tried to catch back on during the downhill section and and flat section by the water, but with the Day 9 in mind, I just rode tempo and the last time up the climb was 5 minutes, 20 seconds — a good minute and a half slower than when I was riding with the others! I finished with a 2:50 time for the 100km stage — total elevation gain was 1,100m. Average heart rate was only 137 bpm with a max of 169 bpm! The body is getting increasingly tired from the long tour. It is tough to race hard over consecutive days without recovery days.

After the finish, I was sitting in the shade drinking my USANA Nutrimeal Strawberry shake; I heard this loud “gunshot” sound that caused everyone within 100 meters to be startled. Even I could hear it without my hearing aids on! My front tire had blown out! The top of my tire was shredded through from the explosion, and I had no idea how this happened. The only explanation I could think of was that the heat was too much and the pressure too high.

Day 9 — The Final Day
The final day of the tour finally arrived, but it was a long day beginning with a several hour bus transfer from Subic Bay back to Manila. The journey had some drama with the rear of the bus filling with smoke, forcing all of us outside onto the road a couple of times.

We also had the obligatory stop at the nationwide popular fast food outlet of Jollibees! This is the kind of food that the organizers have been feeding us. We were all dropped off at the Tour of Luzon Bike Shop and all the foreign riders were told to relax at Starbucks for about an hour while the organizers tended to organizing the final stage.

The final stage had the largest crowd turnout and was held in the middle of the Makati City Business District. The loop was 2.2kms long and we raced around 27 times to complete 60kms.

After eight days of hardcore racing, the legs did not have the same snap in them but I found enough energy to produce my best result of the tour with a 10th-place finish. The average speed was close to 45km/h and there were plenty of attacks but none getting away since EMG’s South African Team were all working on the front to protect their Yellow Jersey holder’s slim lead of 9 seconds over the Kelly Benefits team.

I tried an attack of my own about half way through the race, and stayed away for nearly a full lap, but the South Africans brought me back. I focused on staying near the front in the final stages but with two laps remaining I had to follow some blistering attacks that split the field up. At that stage of the race, you need to be sure to follow any serious attacks if you want to have a shot of doing well in the finale.

I probably did a little too much in that second last lap that I had no time to recover for the final sprint. I still managed to maneuver myself into a reasonable position, but it was still too far back, and with the U-turn it would make it difficult to compete in the sprint. I got onto the wheel of my teammate in the last 600m but was pushed out by a late charging Kelly Benefits rider who also clipped my handlebars as he went by (he finished 2nd).

I lost momentum and a gap of a couple of bike lengths opened up. I had to restart my sprint and managed to close the gap again, but at this point I had spent my gas and could only pass 2-3 riders to place 10th. I rolled up at the start-finish line next to my two surviving teammates and we all enjoyed the ice-cold USANA Nutrimeal shakes in front of the onlooking crowd.