Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Madeira/ Hyde Park/ Grandview

I decided to skip out on heading to Georgia for the Nationals Road Race, in favor of staying semi-local and doing the USA Crit Series weekend in Ohio with pretty good prize money, as opposed to driving 12 hours each way and racing for some funny looking frock and zero dollars. Frocks don't feed all my babies and baby momma's. J/K LOL.

Friday was a twilight crit in a nice little area of Cincinnati call Madeira. Good crowds, good course (unless you're scurred of the dark and 180* turns), and it's conveniently located next to our sponsor's, family's home. Which is more like a hotel. I had good legs coming off Nature Valley, so that racing was fun for me. The 3 of us Panthers were aggressive and we had Paul in a solo move for the middle 30 minutes of the race, which let Kirk and I relax for a bit. Jamey Driscoll of Jamis slowly, bus surely pulled it back together and the remaining 20 laps or so were very aggressive as we tried to get a break to go. No break went, but we did whittle the front group to 25 guys or so. I got bumped off Kirk's wheel by Clayton Barrows in the final 180 and tried to fight him for it, but he is a large man. I had to settle for 6th with Jamis stacking the top, but Clay Murfet got the win.


Got you tix to the gun show?

Saturday we hung out by the pool, went for a little spin and I took a 2 hour nap, all before heading down to the course for the Hyde Park Blast at 8:30. For some reason the course is always pretty brutal. Lots of attrition again and it wasn't even that hot. Clayton Barrows was away solo for a looong time, Paul (our Paul) and Jamey Driscoll, Clay Murfet, and 2 others bridged up and lapped the field. Once It was all back together Greg, Kirk and I took the front with 4 to go to hopefully shepherd Paul to the W. Greg did what he does best and smashed out a few strong laps, all the way down to 1/2 lap to go when a Jamis guy jumped and then I followed with Kirk and Paul on my wheel. We came out of the last corner sitting pretty well and Kirk opened up the sprint from a long way out for Paul. It was probably 350 meters to the line and Paul drag raced his breakaway companions to a 2nd place on the day and a nice chunk of the 10,000 bucks. Kirk and I rolled in in 9th and 11th to collect a bit of change for the team as well.


Greg, Me, Kirk, Paul in hiding.

I headed up to my regular host house for Ohio racing, the Chartier's, after the race and we ate some delicious Wendy's Dollar Menu items and tried to get rid of our late night racing buzz so we could sleep. That happened around 2AM... We had breakfast over a live feed of the Belgian Champs and I was on my way to Columbus for the Tour de Grandview, one of my favorites. 40 trips up the hill always seems to soften the legs and it's an uphill sprint that I tell myself is good for me.

The race was aggressive early, but nothing was really going anywhere until I unleashed the mother of all attacks. Not actually, but I did attack on the hill and dragged 3 others with me. We had a nice gap immediately and had some critical teams represented, so we worked our gap up to a minute inside the last 3 laps and then started thinking about how to sort things out from there. One of the guys in the move was none other than recently upgraded cat 2 Jon Atwell from Bloomington. He's much stronger than his category would suggest. I knew this and tried to make sure he didn't try any funny business and ride away from all of us Fabian style. Since he is a bit of a newb, he got stuck on the front leading it into the uphill sprint. From here I can let the photos do the talking:













So Jon lead the sprint out and still got me. Piss. None of us had any clue at the time who'd won. But if I had to lose that though, I'm glad it was to another Bloomington racer. Some consolation was that my 2nd place moved me up to second in the Omnium for the weekend and netted me and my baby momma's some mo' money. Hollerrr!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Oh, Hey There!

That's right, your favorite comma splice-laden blog is showing signs of life! Just what you always wanted!!! As you can imagine, lots has happened since I last wrote an update, but most of it is hardly news worthy. But you're gettin' it anyway.

So just a quick re-visit of my last post about being past a knee injury... I wasn't. I ended up being off the bike until the 8th of April and spending approximately $72382198u27.03 (yes, I know there's a "u" in there) dollars on treatments and voodoo of different types. But since that date I've been able to train with no knee issues and gradually been trying to acquire some fitness. It's been a somewhat slow process, and I'm just now into my 12th week of training, which some (including my new coach) would still consider the period where one should be working on "Base". I'm still a bit behind where my power numbers would be normally in the middle of a race reason, but considering my start to the year I feel ok about things.



I've been training more/more specifically/longer hours than I have in previous seasons, and it seems to be bringing results along more quickly. I know, imagine that?!? I have been doing some races for a little over a month now and just got back from the first real test of the year at Nature Valley. Things weren't fantastic, but it was definitely good to raise the racing level a bit and get some harder miles in my legs. Thanks, United Healthcare! The rest of the team raced pretty well and our little Canadian was 3rd in the Best Young Rider Competition, with a great ride (12th) in the Stillwater crit on the final day.



I was also planning on going through this whole post without mentioning cyclocross, but I just can't. It's coming! Schedules are being made, emails are being sent, and supplies are being supplied. #cantwait. Hoping this new approach for the road season will also be convenient for my legs at the end of the season, too.

Don't look now, but the 4th of July is just around the corner, and around here, that means Trucker hats (of the SRAM variety), cut off t-shirts, Budweiser and a trip to the local dirt race car track for some racin' watchin' and the longest fireworks show you've ever done seen. 'Merica.