Nature Valley Grand Prix

Yesterday was the first day of the NVGP, an it was a double day. We had a 6.1 mile TT in the morning, then a 75min crit downtown in the evening.

I felt decent in the time trial, but couldn't manage to get my pacing right.  The course was a bit tricky because it was downhill with a tail wind on the way out, and obviously the opposite on the way back, plus you had a little kicker and a 0.7 mile climb to the finish.

I really tried hard to conserve, but I just couldn't get myself to o easy enough.  I went way too hard on the uphill at about 1.2 miles to go and then was too far into the red at the base of the climb and was basically crawling up it. I thought it would never end. My legs did feel pretty good, but I need more TT practice.

I finished around 100th out of 150, but the times were so close that if I'd have gone just a bit faster I could have moved up 30-40 spots. Oh well, one of these days I'm going to crack the top 50% of an NRC TT. And I know that's still not great, but its slowly coming around.

Paul and I went back to our host house for the afternoon and hit the grocery store and tried to kill some time, a tough thing to do with no cable or Wi-Fi.

We ended up watching the Disney DVD, Earth. If you've seen one nature show, you've seen em all. This one was no different.  Needless to say, my Droid has been getting a workout this week (this post is coming from my phone too).

The Downtown St. Paul Crit was seriously downtown, a cool scene for bike race.  Paul got a call up because he's in the Best Amateur Jersey for the race. Looks like we'll be riding the front all day in the road races to protect "the Jersey"... psych. For the most part I don't think there will be much Jersey defending for that jersey. Anyway,  back to the racing. It was hard as hell to move up. I started mid pack and went full gas for the first 10-15 minutes to crack the top 30 or so riders. Every time I looked down my heart rate was near 200. I eventually made it to a spot where I was satisfied to hang out, but it didn't really get any easier because it was a full time job just trying to hold that position.

This crit was cutthroat. I don't think it was due to the quality of field, because I've raced with these guys before, but I think this tight downtown course really contributed to the chaos. The fighting for position in the field was insane. Everyone was chopping everyone, elbows and fists were flying, it was pretty gnarly. I avoided most of the drama and had started creeping towards the back of the pros train at the front when a wreck happened on the inside of one o the corners and send a wave of bodies my way and eventually launching me an my bike into a parking meter, head first.  My body and bike are fine for the most part, but when I rammed the meter with my bars it broke my SRM head, so that's pretty annoying.

I took a free lap and got myself back in there. They wouldn't let me back in at the front so I had to work my ass off to get back up in time for the finish. I never regained my position at the front, but I was able to avoid most of the carnage and roll in just inside the top 30. I think with the right luck and enough stupidity on my part, I can get amongst it this week.

Paul and I are off to the Mall of America to kill some time. Check ya later.

I uh wuh

I bring you this update from a doubley male occupied queen size bed in the Muskie Motel in the booming metropolis of Muscatine, Iowa. And yes, The Muskie is a nice as it sounds.

We're out here for the memorial day weekend races that include a Friday RR, followed by 3 crits, one of which being Snake Alley. So far we've completed half of the weekend so I figured I get you up to speed.

Well we nearly missed the start to the road race because we rode our bikes to the wrong side of tracks, literally. We went to get a bite to eat (a six inch sub and three cookies), and the worlds longest train blocked us from getting back to the start. The train was about 7 minutes long but we arrived with a whopping 3 minutes to spare. So I just finished my cookies on the neutral roll out.

In an unusual development, a break stuck and we weren't represented, so we fought for scraps in the field sprint. Chris 7th, Paul 10, yours truly 12th. Nothing to write home about but we all kept our skin on the sketchy run into town.

Saturday was the main event of the weekend, the Snake Alley Criterium. We did 20 laps, whick meant 20 trips up the short but steep Snake. Its a rough brick climb with 5 switchbacks and is only 30 seconds long or so.  The race normally blows up completely except for the group of leaders.

This year I found myself in the lead group of 15 or so with Paul off the front with some crazy Ukrainian dude. Well Paul dropped his chain and was coming back to the field so I tried to get on the front and set a little slower pace, but all that my efforts on the front accomplished was putting me into the red, and with 90 degree temps, there was no recovering.

The leaders dropped me with 1.5 laps to go, just going over the top of the snake. So I rolled in alone to finish 18th. That doesn't sound like much, but it really isn't terrible considering the parcours.  I am kind of disappointed because if I had been a little mire conservative and stayed out of the wind a but more, I'm sure I could have stayed with the leaders for the remaining 3 min of racing and factored into the sprint for 5th.  I guess you learn from your mistakes, but an extra 500 bucks sure would be welcome in my pockets.

We still have two crittier crits left this weekend and those are just what I like, so hopefully we can pop off a win and get errbody's pockets phat.

Here's a link to the race coverage Geraint, the man behind Bloomington Velo-News, wrote for Podium Insight.

http://www.podiuminsight.com/2010/05/29/starchyk-miller-win-snake-alley-criterium/

Doing the Bull Dance, Feeling the Flow.

I felt like writing something on the blog, so here we are.

Have you lost anything lately?  Cell phone, GPS,  sunglasses, a snake? If so, I've probably found it one the side of the road in the last week or so. Seriously, I found a fully functional Garmin NUVI on the road last week and this week I've already found 2 cell phones and three pairs of sunglasses.  None of the phones or glasses were keepers, but the GPS is money. I actually gave it to my brother to make up for being a mean older sibling.  As for the snakes, been seeing like 5 a day. The majority are dead, but I've seen some fatties that were still alive and scheming to eat me.

I've been scouring the racing websites for something good for this weekend, but there really isn't much worth traveling for. There are 2 crits within an hour drive of Bloomington this weekend, but I don't really want to waste 2 good training days on 1 hour crits. The solution, ride to the race and get a ride home. The race on Sat. is going to be about 50-55 miles to get there and then tack on a 75min crit at the end and it should be a good training day. We'll see how the legs feel on Sunday morning before I decide if I'm gonna do the same thing again.

With Little 500 coming up next weekend, I'll have the next two weekends at home, and that will be nice. I'm trying to save some of my "travel bullets" for later in the year, because if I don't, by the time cross rolls around i'm sure I'll be needing all the mental strength i can muster to deal with the full-on cx schedule.

A couple more weeks of training around here and then it'll be full time racing and recovering in-between. 

Alright, I'm outta here. The blogging energy I was feeling earlier is dying out, so I'm off to bed.