Planet Bike Cup USGP #1 and #2

Here comes another blog entry from my phone so bear with me. We are driving back from Madison, WI after the first round of the USGP's. Zach, Andy and I drove up on friday afternoon to check out the courses as usual and get settle into the hotel for the weekend. My personal soigneur Lauren had to stay home this weekend because of sorority obligations... Anyway. We were staying at the oh so luxurios Super 8, along with half the other bike racers in town for the weekend.

Saturday I didn't race until 3 so I had time to sleep in and still get plenty of time on the course to dial in tires and tire pressures. I went with my semi slicks and they were money all day. My lingering 1 UCI point from last season (my most recent points kick in next week) got me a 3rd row starting spot and I got a good start from there.
I wasn't really sure where I was riding, but there were lots of big name guys around and I was setteling in nicely. Before I knew it my group was scooping up guys like Troy Wells and Barry Wicks. Believe it or not, we dropped Barry and we came to the last technical section with Marko Lalonde, Brian Matter, Tristan Schouten, Troy Wells and Myself. We were sprinting for 11th place in a freaking C1 race. I jumped to try to be first to the tough section. Marko beat me to it so I was second We pretty much went bleed through your eyes hard for the last 60 seconds of the race and we came to the line exactly how we went into the woods. That gave me 12th on the day and another 6 UCI points. That was a whole lot better than I thought I could do at a C1 race with a small handfull of euro pros to boot.

Today was day number 2 and it was just a C2 race, so points only went 10 deep. Once again I had plenty of time to preride and mess with tires beforehand, but it didn't matter much because it started raining right before our race started.

I got to staging and saw that I was the only one riding an all around challenge griffo. Everyone had their super muddy race tire, the Dugast Rhino. I had some rhinos handy, so I went and swapped wheels. The only problem was I hadn't ridden them at all since the sun had been shining all day. So I guessed on a tire pressure, banking on the rain to continue and it to get soft. Well I guessed low, waaay too low... And it stopped raining once we were on the grid.

I knew I was going to be hurting for grip, but this was pathetic. If you've ever tried to corner on a flat tire then you know the feeling I was dealing with every tiem I tried to corner with any speed. Since I was getting gapped out of every corner it was a lost cause trying to stay with decent groups. I just kept going backwards. It all boils down to making a stupid decision on my part, but I just didn't know what was better; the right tired at the wrong pressure or the wronf tires at the right pressure. Not totally sure, but I think I ended up 22nd.

I'm still really pleased with the weekend because I finally made the group that I've been wanting to make. It's really motivating to ride at the front of a big race like this and I think it has helped me set some new goals for myself, something I struggel with doing. I really appreciate all the nice texts, emails and calls from everyone the last few weekends. It was cool to hear that I was far enough up yesterday that they were following me on cxmagazine.com's live updates.
This weekend there aren't any UCI's within a reasonable distance, so I'll be heading to Louisville to do the OVCX. Then its the Triple UCI weekend in Cincinatti after that. It will be nice to have some light travel days the next few weekends.

I have a few pictures from the weekend and hopefully I find some more and I'll get them up on here sometime this weekend. Until then, thanks for reading.