Phil Zajicek

Gila….Finally.

// June 12th, 2009 // pz racing

Well, a pretty phenomenal past month.  After a rough California campaign that included a broken wrist at TOC then mass amounts of road rash at San Dimas I turned my focus on the month of May.  With a nice three week block of training at home I was able to really build on the form and prepare for some big climbing stages.  Along with my coach, Dirk Friel, we laid out an aggressive training regime.  Fortunately I had my friend and training partner Matt Cooke along with me for the majority of my rides.  Cookie is always up for the big dirt road mountain rides which finished many times with snow falling as we raced each other to the 10,000′ summit of Brainard Lake.  Some great motorpacing as well courtesy of Ben Raby and Liz’s ‘61 Vespa.  Nothing quite like motorpacing up LeftHand Canyon at 25mph to prepare for climbing with the Astana boys!

First up was a quick flight down to Tucson then down to Bisbee for the 31st annual La Vuelta de Bisbee. Bisbee was the perfect tune-up for Gila. A condensed 4 stages in 3 days, hard tt’s and aggressive road races that weren’t too taxing. Rolled into Gila feeling fresh and ready for some aggressive racing. Started off with the mtn top finish of Mogollon. Had a bit of an off day to begin but progressively felt better as the days went on. Had one of the best tt’s of my life, 4th place in a stellar field and definitely a confidence builder going into the final stage-the super hard Gila Monster. Great legs from the start of the day, the team did a great job to look after me until the big climbs began and it was every man for himself. Well, except for the Astana boys who were pretty well represented with Horner, Levi, and Lance. Over the top of the biggest climb of the day it was down to just the three Astanas plus myself. Beyer and Burke made contact over the top and the five of us were off and headed into the final climb to the finish in Pinos Altos. As Horner set a furious pace to the final climb I only had one thought in my mind-save everything for the final kilometer and just smash them. With Henk yelling in my ear and my sweetie in the SRAM car I had huge motivation. As Levi led the sprint out up the final km to the finish I waited and hit out with 300m to go. Gave it everything and soon realized that I had pulled away from the Astana duo and had time to throw up my hands and celebrate the biggest win of my career. Parent’s and in-laws at the finish line and Liz just behind. A huge moment and something that still brings a huge smile to my face.