Back to it

Got some racing done this past weekend.

Saturday at the track was a bust. Legs still feeling junky, but I think the track blew them open a bit. Sunday I was able to put them to good use in the break at Mullica. The blogs have already blown up about what went down, so I'm not gonna rehash the details, but I'm putting an end to it right here, right now. And I can do that since I was in the break.

Mad respect all around for all those who get on their bike every weekend and show up and lay it down. Let's continue to talk with our legs, good or bad decisions abound.

So yea, legs felt good again Sunday. Was happy to have something left in the tank after getting caught to lead Andy out for a decent result. Dude has slaved for me and guided me all year and I'm glad to give some back.

Crack your favorite brew tonight. It's hump day. All downhill from here.

What a rut

Found myself in a bit of a rut here. Had a fantastic run of racing and life in general there for a while. Then, I took a break. Few days off the bike, another week easy. That was the beginning of a downward slide, but it should have been the beginning of another period of tearing it up.

That's the way it goes though. Cycling and life. Just ebbs and flows.

I did get my cat 1 upgrade following the mess that was Fitchburg. That feels really good. It's sort of a symbol for all the dedication and sacrifice I have made to get to this level.

Though since then, I've been struggling to regain the form I had earlier in the season. Top it off with a hard crash at Fitchburg and a stupid, ridiculous crash in the Thursday night training series at Rodale last night, and I'm in need of a new groove. Some old DB last night decided he wanted to get in front of me. Too bad he didn't wait till he cleared my front wheel before swinging over and sticking his rear mech in front wheel sending me hurtling to the ground to reopen my wounds from Fitch.

I'll try and hit the track tomorrow morning so I can get an invite to Tuesday nights on the track and if my frame is good (it might have been f'ed up in the crash last night) I'll hit up Mullica on Sunday.

Hopefully it clears up for some good Friday night racing action. Need some beers, racin, and friends to lift the spirits.

Update soon

I swear. I'll write something here soon. Dropped of the blog radar for a while. In the meantime, check out Andy's post about the hard time we had at Fitchburg.

Back to healing the road rash...

Shamwow In Jail

http://www.killsometime.com/video/video.asp?ID=1453

Wilmington Grand Prix

132 Starters. 48 Finishers.

Normal pack jockeying for first half of the race. Couple moves go and come back. 13 laps to go, two guys are sitting off the front like 10 meters not going out or coming back. Feels like the right time to make a move.

Take off, pass the two out front and hammer my brains out alone for 3 laps. The two I passed bridge up and we work together from there. The gap went up to 25 seconds at one point, but then started to come back down to 10 seconds with like 5 laps to go.

Thanks to some work breaking up the chases from the teammates and some extra burying of the legs we get the gap back up a bit. Last lap I sit on and coming out of turn 4 I just let it all loose and take the win by a good gap.

Solid day in all.

Habitat

Cool course. 2nd time I've done it.

A few laps in, Fader and another rider are up the road a little bit. I roll up to them and get on the front and drive for a little bit and a good little gap opens up. We collect a few guys and get rolling, but never too well. So we spend a few laps out there and get caught. I try another move which also fails.

Finally, Whitman and Miller get up the road a bit. So I decide that is the move. Spend half a lap to roll up to them. We get going pretty well, have a good gap. A Colavita guy rolls up and works with us pretty hard. 4 more guys bridge up to us, including Fader, a KBS Pro, another Colavita guy, and someone else I can't remember.

Nearly repeated the Deer disaster of last year on the 2nd to last lap. A whole herd crossed the course in front of us.

I was stupid and got caught up front on the last lap on the back stretch. A Colavita guy went solo off us. Should have gone with him, but I was a pussy. We were guttered hard on the left side of the road and I attacked to the right side of the road and put my head down just long enough to ride right off the road. So after acknowledging my retardedness I came back and was still caught out front. So I went real hard into the final hill as my only hope. Got passed by just about everyone.

Got 7th.

True Athletes

Memorial Hall

Before the race I told myself I have never seen a break away succeed in the P123 race on this course. So, I planned to just sit in till the end, which I should have done. But instead I went with a bunch of moves by Geronimo and Elliston and did way too much work. Sprinted in the money for 13th. Not too bad, but not great and not smart. Oh well....still have lots of lessons to learn.

On a side note, how is Turkey Hill not a PA BAR race?

Turkey Hill

So, the day started with a little pre-race crash in the parking lot. There was the film of oil and water just on the surface of the asphalt that made it slick as hell - I was slipping in my street shoes. Came around a turn and the front tire gave up the ghost.

I roll up to the line with some road rash and beat up kit and get the expected comments. Starting out batting a thousand here.

Race starts and stays together till 5 laps to go. This whole time I am on Stephan Kincaid's wheel like white on rice. I have a tendency of blowing my wad early and being overly aggressive chasing shit down, so I figured it would be the best learning experience I could get to just see what he does. As a former winner of the race and one of the most experienced dudes in the peleton, plus someone I highly respect, I felt comfortable knowing I could learn from his knowledge.

I was so much so on his wheel that I got some comments. Skip (George) on Alliance said, "Hey Stephan, scratch your ass. I want to see if this guy on your wheel will scratch his too!" I'll come back to that in a moment.

So, a break got established, I believe, with 5 to go and gained a 1:15 on the field. Still, I sat in. On the last lap just out of the feed zone, Miller attacks through the rollers. Geronimo gets to the front, pulls through, pulls off and looks around and put his hand up in the air. At that exact moment, it got real slow, so I decided it was time to go and get up to Miller, who was in No Man's Land.

I made it up to Miller along with some other guy just before the gambler wall. We worked and caught the break on the finish stretch about a mile from the line on the last rise. The break had two Harley guys including Dewald, a couple Kelly Benefit Guys, a Hershey dude and some others. I think it was about 12 guys once we got there.

Tried to find the right wheels in the sprint, opened her up, and came in a solid 3rd!

I'll take that.

After the race, I went up to Skip and said, "That is why when Stephan scratches his ass, I scratch my ass."

The 1st and 2nd place names escape me now, but winner was a Kelly Benefit Pro, and the 2nd place was a Latitude guy.

Team Work

Did the Oley Training race last night. Had my backpack on since I rode to work, then to the ride, then back home. Figured it added good training resistance. About 5 miles into the ride there was a small move about 100 meters up the road with Nick, Rasta, Big Jim, and a couple other guys, but it wasn't gaining any ground. So, I bridged up to it, told everybody to enjoy the draft afforded to them by the backpack, and got on the front and drilled it to open up a gap that wouldn't close.

The last five miles or so we started to up the pace up some of the rollers which shelled everyone but Nick, Rasta, and Big Jim. Coming into last couple miles we finally were able to shell Big Jim (he's pretty damn strong) and then Nick and I decided to work on a little team tactics.

I stayed back and let Nick drive us towards the line. He rotated with Rasta a bit, with me hanging off the back. Finally, before the last sweeping turn, Nick attacked which forced Rasta to chase. Once Rasta caught Nick, I countered hard on the inside of the turn and soloed the last mile for the win. Yea, its just a training race, but its cool to see tactics come together to win a race.

That's what training races are for - not just to get a hard ass work out, but to practice the skills and thought processes you need on race day that will culminate in a win.

Fucks my shit up

Lesson...

Don't put your Nalgene in the dishwasher. The lid might melt off and land on the heating coil.

Ephrata Crit

Wow. That was hard.

After yesterdays mental meltdown, I decided before the race I was going to pick 1 move I thought was a good move to cover and keep it to that. Well...I picked the right move, but picked it too late and couldn't get across to it. So I spent a lap tanking myself to get there, never did, and came back to wait it out to the finish. I stayed about 10 wheels back the rest of the race and with about 10 laps to go Bikereg.com, Empire, and Battley went to the front and really started to string shit out.

So I stayed on either Geronimo or the Bikereg Sprinter guy's (name is escaping me now) wheel. With 2 laps to go, some Jabroni cut inside on turn 3 and swung wide and I made an instinctual bonehead mistake and grabbed my rear brake (at least I didn't grab my front). The rear slid and hop and caught just as I let off the brake and I saved it. I lost a couple spots there. The last 2 laps were insane fast and I finished right at end of the sprint group. Came across the line about to throw up and not being able to see straight, so it was lit up pretty well.

I'm getting there...

This is why I am an idiot...

Ephrata RR

80 miles in just under 3 hours. I covered every single move like a stupid moron. I know better...what the hell was going through my head? Was it the heat? WTF?

Like Knight Rider

So I'm crusin' down 476 south on Sunday in my '85 Trans Am. Knight Rider Style baby. Ok, so it is actually my Dad's car that I was borrowing until I find what I am looking for, which is weird for me because this is the first time since the day I turned 14 that I have not owned my own car. First car was this:


Anyway, I am rolling along at about 75 with the windows down and the stereo blaring. I go to accelerate mildly and the car downshifts, but cannot get out of its own way. All the sudden, I can't even maintain highway speed. So I take a gander at my gauges. Well, the engine temp and CEL are located on the cluster furthest away from the driver on the right, partially obstructed by the dash and completely out of line of sight, so you would never notice a problem unless you crank your neck like 60 degrees to check it (see red circled gauge below).


The temp gauge is off the scale. Big time. I pull over, pop the hood, and notice a melted fan shroud and the coolant boiling ferociously in the reservoir. No good. Bottom line: I toasted the motor and associated cooling components. Good Shit. That's a first, even for me.

Battenkill Report

Battenkill. I guess you could say it went well. Race was actually pretty sedate until the last 15 miles or so. We'd drill it up climbs and through dirt sections, but then the whole field would slow up to a crawl and everyone would catch back on.

On the last true dirt descent, which was very fast, loose, and on a sweeping left hander, I was about 10 wheels from the front of the race sitting in perfect position feeling freakin' great. Two Jabroni's decided they could take the turn twice as fast as everyone else and swung wide, forcing me into the forest. Seriously. I was bombing through leaves, twigs, tree stumps, dead bodies, who the hell knows what. I'm not sure how I saved it and stayed on my bike and made it back on the course, but I'll attribute that to my Cyclocross skills.

50 guys must have passed me as I was trying to stay alive through the brush. The dirt road led us onto a paved climb, which I hammered up and found myself in a group I thought to be the lead group... until I crested the hill and saw the pace car up the road. So I jumped off that group and bridged up to a chase of 5 guys. I asked, "Is that our group?" to which some punk ass replied, "Shut the fuck up and pedal." Which was funny, because NONE of them knew how to paceline. I coached them for the next few kilometers and we finally got something resembling a paceline together and got within 50 meters of the lead group at the final climb which was dirt and quite steep.

I tried to bridge across, but it didn't happen. So I rolled in with the chase group. The initial results had me at 16th and now they say I placed 20th, but I'm positive 16th was the right placing, since I came in 2nd in the chase group. The timing on the latest results has me finishing 2nd to last in terms of time in the chase group, so that's not right. But oh well, no more glory in 16th than in 20th.

So that was Battenkill... that's racin'.

Speaking of messed up results, USA Cycling has me 22nd in the Omnium for the Philly 2Day, but the official results have me 15th. Oh well, again, no real change in bragging rights.

Fun things to come

Report on Battenkill plus how I seized a Chevy 305 motor in an 85 Trans Am this weekend. Oh yea....

Not for the average child...

Off to Battenkill

Got my wheels all glued up. Might actually train on these bad boys after the race since my current training wheels are just about to give up the ghost. With Stans in them I won't have much to worry about.

Did the Thursday night training crit across from the velodrome tonight. It was pretty awesome, got some good sprinting in. I need to really work on getting my snap back, but that'll come.

Also: 8th in the bar isn't too bad of a way to start the season. Sure it'll change, but a nice little confidence boost for now.

Battnenkill Prep

Walked into my Parents' basement Sunday night. Found a brand new pair of tubular wheels I totally forgot I had. Sweet find right before Tour of the Battenkill.

Got me some Vittora Pavé EVO-CG tires. Will put some Stan's in them. Should be a bomb-proof set up.

And yes, I know. They aren't centered. They are just on there to stretch them out.