Short's Report: Tour of Belize Stage 9

Tour of Belize: Stage 9 - The Final Day - 90 miles

When we woke up this morning you could tell that we were tired. We were also not looking forward to racing on the pot hole infested roads either. Today’s stage took us from San Ignacio to the Guatemalan border, back through San Ignacio and on to Belize City. This is what happened:

As we started the race you could tell that we didn’t have the same go get’m attitude as usual. John, Joe, and I all rode at the very back, sometimes off the back to avoid any possibility of hitting the holes. It worked. After we hit the town of Belmopan the roads got much better and we started moving up. The entire last half of the race was windy and in the gutter. This wasn’t as hard as it was annoying. The closer you got to the edge of the road the worse the road got. The team that had the race leader (Santinos/AEG Toshiba) had seven riders on the front protecting the race leader. Most of the race was pretty uneventful. Boyd rode close to the front and Mike had a shadow from the guy in second place for the master’s jersey. I guess he thought that he could get back 10 min. on Mike on the last stage. Not a chance.

As the race got closer to town (15 miles) two riders got away. The team leading the charge was down to four and they were not gaining ground on the break (Dave Wiswell and Shane Weaver). About 10 miles out I looked around and I had Boyd, Mike, Joe, and Chris around me. We decided to take over the chase. It was a little far out but if we wanted to try and win the stage we needed to get this back. As our four guys’ went to the front the pace increased by about 4-5 mph. These guys were flying. I was sitting on the back of the train hoping that I could hold on and pull something off in the sprint. You could visibly see the gap coming down to the break. Now there is no doubt that we are going to catch them.

As we approached the Belize City, city limits we had the honor of bringing the race into town. Honestly, they didn’t have a choice. By this point Alliance Environmental had split the pack into about 3 groups. Coming into the final circuits we got word that the race leader flatted. Out of respect we shut the lead out down. Now the Guatemalan team took over. I jumped across to their lead out behind the Belizean sprinter Gregory Lovell. With one lap to go of the circuits I was sitting pretty. The only problem was that I wasn’t feeling pretty. As we hit the last round about I got tangled up with Dave Wiswell. From there it was about 750meters to the line. Everyone took off like rockets. I had no snap in my legs. My only choice was to slowly wind it up. I tried and tried. I just couldn’t get there. That was it. Lovell won and the race was finally over. We did get a nice thank you for the hard work from Gregory Lovell for keeping it strung out coming into town and bringing the break back. After all, his team wasn’t able to.

As a team we feel like this was a great learning experience. I think that we grew as riders and more importantly we grew as a team. The really neat thing is that today before we left for the airport Mike, Joe, and I went walking through the streets of Belize City to eat lunch. Everyone was cheering for us, waving at us. This entire country now knows who the Alliance Environmental Cycling Team is. Everywhere we went people would ask us who we rode for. As soon as we told them they were star struck.

We have started making plans to return in October for an end of the year celebration. NO BIKES ALLOWED. We would like to have the entire team come down and just hang out on one of the islands for a few days, family’s invited.

I hope that everyone enjoyed the race reports. I have been told by someone on the team (I’m not going to name names, but he won the masters jersey) that I have to do the race reports for the rest of the year in third person. I tell you, he’s letting this old guy thing go to his head.