Wintergreen Ascent

Wintergreen, VA
Wintergreen Ascent Saturday May 01, 2010
by: Steven Jones

This marked my sixth attempt at the Wintergreen Ascent. A brutal hill climb starting at the turn off for Wintergreen Ski Resort and ending at Devil’s Knob over looking the ski slopes, this race gains 2550 ft over 6.8 miles. As the Virginia state hill climb this race draws over 300 competitors for the time trial format event. In my lowly Cat 5 event I competed against 40 races. Which made it all the more fun when I started dead last (evidently registering at the last possible minute has its advantages).

The first two and a half miles are relative easy averaging out to a 5% grade. Most people go out way to hard here, but having raced this event before I knew to hold back for the steep finish.

But it doesn’t matter how much you hold back, because when the road kicks to 9% and then 11% there really isn’t much you can do but churn. Still I kept passing people and never had to worry about the Cat 4 guys behind me catching up.

Around the halfway point a yellow jacket flew down my open jersey and began stinging my stomach prompting some rather intersting shots for the nearby photographer. I kept on churning and passing riders. In the end I turned out my second fastest time up the mountain at 45 min 2 sec and pulled out a 5th place in the Cat 5 group, less than minute and a half off of the winning time.