El Tour De Tucson
2022 Tour De Tucson
There is no rest for the weary. What was I thinking signing up for a century right after the high school mountain bike season? I let my dad's friend, Jay Handy, bait me into doing it. Jay has been participating in the Tour for years and loves it, but he likes making little comments suggesting the Valdez Family is scared to do the Tour. I've wanted to do a century and a road race for a while, so now I can strike those items off the bucket list. The Tour raises money for nonprofits and charities. And, Jay shamed my mom and dad into it as well, so it's all good.
Once at the venue, the size of the race/ride was apparent. The packet pick-up line was a mile long and took hours. That said, the event is very organized, at least as much as it can be when dealing with 7K+ athletes.
The race started at 7 a.m., but we arrived at 6 a.m. as we were told to arrive early. It was cold. Because of past mountain bike results, my family and I started with the platinum group up front, which still had a ton of people.
The route is 102 miles with 2,885 ft. of elevation. See map:
The start of the race was hectic because of the number of riders, but after the first few miles, large groups started to form, and things settled down. I was in the first lead group with many riders, probably around 140, close to the size of the Tour de France peloton. The super-fast guys were at the very front. Colby Simmons was there kitted out in his Jumbo Visma stuff.
It was fun being in a large group like I’ve seen on t.v. All was going well until about 30 miles, on a long descent. The fast front guys started hammering in an open area with a big crosswind. I’ve heard pros talking about the difficulty of riding in a crosswind, and now I was seeing it firsthand.
Our large group was strung out in single file for what seemed like a mile long. I was in the middle of the pack. The high pace continued through the crosswind. I started to fear the rider in front of me was becoming detached from the riders ahead, so I slid out of the pace line to move in front of him. This was a bad, bad idea. The wind hit me as soon as I slid out, and I started to lose positions fast. No one was willing to let me back into the pace line. I found myself in the back of the group quickly.
As the miles went by I could see ahead the large group had begun to break apart. 30ish guys were off the front with a good gap, then there were around 100 riders in the second group. I was in a 3rd group which had formed and seemed to be losing ground because we couldn’t get organized. There was only 10 of us pulling. The other 20 riders were just passenger, unwilling to work on the front.
We continued like this to the finish. We lost time to the riders ahead, but never got caught from behind. I finished in 138th overall out of 1789 athletes. I was sixth in my age group.
2022 Tour de Tucson Results - River Valdez
I made some tactical mistakes because of my inexperience with road cycling. Still, it was super fun and a good workout. Right now, I still like mountain biking better because the road tactics are totally different. Positioning in the group is super important. And the riders around you can dramatically affect how you finish. If you're in a motivated group, you can do some damage vs. being in a less motivated pack. Mountain biking is more of an individual sport, which I love.
The next race is the Dawn to Dusk on Dec. 10th. I should be resting, but a few friends asked me to join their four-person team, and I can't say no.
Oh, and my ENTIRE family beat Jay Handy!!! Sorry bro, maybe next year.
