My form is great right now after 6 weekends of straight racing, I rode a 20:36 (29.3 mph) at lowes motor speedway last night beating my previous best time by almost 45 seconds. I’m hoping my form will hold out until mid September, just one month left.
I just counted how many races I’ve done this season and its at a hefty 57 races so far this season. And I’m not ready for the season to end. I should end up with 70 or more races this season, then starts cross which I’m pretty stoked on.
I took some of the kids up to Asheville this past weekend for the French Broad Classic, which is always an awesome race. The kids parents booked the hotel room and well they’re hotel standards are a little higher than mine, If I went by myself I would probably be at the camp ground. We ended up staying at the Holiday Inn suites where the kids had their own rooms and own bathrooms and each room had a plasma TV in it, I slept on the pull-out couch.
I forgot how awesome the TT course is, nice pavement, rolling terrain, shade the whole way, and your riding right beside a river so you can get some cool air off the water.
The crit course was new and wasn’t my favorite so far this year, it was tight and basically in a neighborhood. I got a good start and went with some of the early moves then settled in the top 20. After twenty minutes I found myself behind a crash with a group of 10. Me and one other guy did most of the chasing but couldn’t do much better than feather the gap. Eventually we both took really hard pulls and made it back, unfortunately right after we made it back there was an acceleration and we both went out the back. While I was out the back Will was off the front with Diego Garavito (3 time pan American champion), they eventually got a lap. After they got a lap Thad Dulin was off the front and Will went straight to the front and was just drilling it to bring back Dulin, It was really impressive. Will was also up there for the field sprint and ended up winning the race. Check out his blog for a full account.
Sunday race report to come.
All in all racing at Fitchburg was super hard and I’ve come to the realization that there are some really strong cat 2s out there. The trip was awesome though I was so stoked that Ethan and the team could send us. The hard racing was just the thing I needed to re-jump start my form for the rest of the season. Of course I wish my form was better but C’est la vie and I’m looking forward to next year.
On top of hard racing theres nothing like sixteen hours in a car to bring you closer to your teamates.
The crit course was super easy three corner mile long course. One corner being a half roundabout that could be taken decently fast and the other two corners being 90 degrees with manholes and pavement changes throughout. Pre riding the course all I could think was gee thats a lot of hay bails in turn 2. The race was easy with the course being relatively flat and wide it was easy to move up and all the corners could be taken pretty fast. Me and Will knew it would come down to a field sprint just by the layout of the course but that didn’t stop us from showing ourselves near the front. I was in a small move or two early on but decided my energy would be better spent keeping Will near the front in the last couple of laps. Will was awesome at keeping position near the front but me on the other hand I constantly had to be moving up on the outside or getting that line through the corner where I could pick up a couple of spots by going through a corner faster than some of the other guys. With two laps to go I was sitting ~20th wheel, I realized that with it being such a open and easy course that we just wern’t going fast enough. The kudzu guy were on the front but they wern’t going as fast as they should have been, going into the second corner people were trying to go into it four wide. Will was sitting ~7th wheel and got pushed into the hay bails, being the first to go down. After him forty plus people tumbled, I had people sprawled out in front of doing 30+ and could do nothing but hit them. getting up the first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t put any weight on my hip so I got my bike and sat down. The medics came to check me out but I was pretty sure I was ok.after sitting therefor a couple of minutes I was able to hobble over to the medical tent to realize I had two elbows and was bleeding pretty bad, the medics cleaned me up and gave me some ice packs for my hip.
After the race Will and I nursed our wounds with a few beers and watched the mens pro race. Tomorrow is a 16 hour drive back to charlotte.
Upcoming races will be the Piedmont triad omnium next weekend, french broad the next, corssroads the next week and a half then a build up to green mountain.
After a lackluster time trial I was determined to be in the break in the road race. The course was really tough a fast(50+ mph) decent on passing the start/ finish, the anouncer said it was a 70+mph decent and I’m calling BS. He also pointed out that I’m not cooler than Henk Vogels. The course was 92 miles of rolling hill on the back side with a couple that called for the small ring. Moving up to the feed zone there was a ~500m long hill probably averaging 10%. The race ended on a 3k climb that was pretty mellow near the bottom and steeper near the top. The pace was super hard from the gun, and with 120 guys it made moving up super tough. I was in a couple of small moves in the beginning but the break got up the road without me and will and the leaders them seemed content on controlling the race, so we sat back and hung out. After 6 laps the course really started to wear on me, and I started to just sit in. The break came back with about a lap and a half to go and metlife didn’t have the gas to control the race any longer and a group of 7 rolled away through the feed zone. I was near the front when they rolled away but everybody in the field was sitting up. By the time I got out to try to get accross they were too far for me to bridge and I only got halfway accross, plus my legs were pretty beat. I was pretty toast on the last lap and sat in and gave up position until I was on the back going through the feedzone the last time, I knew I should have been farther up leading into the climb. On the final 3k climb I was too far back but picked up ~40 guys leading up the climb and finished like 60th out of 120. The road race was definatly harder than any pro 1/2 race I’ve done before.
