Another successful crit

Last night was week 10 or so of the MP crits. I managed to stay in the pack and not crash, which is always a good thing. I did get to see one crash, it was rather spectacular. Bikes and bodies flying and tires exploding made for quite a show. Unfortunately, as you can assume from the fact that I saw it, I was behind the crash and this caused a gap to open between the main field and myself. I was forced to blow it out chasing back onto the group which really put me in a spot of bother. I spent most of the rest of the race hanging on to the back of the pack. I wanted to try to go for a top ten sprint finish but I had nothing left at the end to sprint with. I was hurting most of the race, I didn't ride too smart. I was out in the wind a lot but I guess that just gave me a better workout. I've got three more chances to make a mark, hopefully I'll get my name on the scoreboard before the end of the summer.

Am I a roadie?

Good gracious what has happened to me? First it was shaved legs and my first road race interspersed in my mountain biking life, now all I have to blog about is roadie stuff. Last week was another crit race, a lot of the big hitters were either moved up into the P/1/2/3 race or sitting out prepping for the State TT race this past weekend(more on that later) so it may have been a little slower. I didn't have my speedometer(thanks Luke) but it felt a little easier. Hopefully I'm just getting faster(thanks Nate). I started up front as usual, tried to ride smart and stay towards the front, not letting gaps form, etc. A few laps in I saw an attack going up the left side so I jumped on his wheel and went with him to the front. I don't know if we actually made a break or not, but he pulled for a bit and then I was on the front. I tried to stay steady and take my turn up there but not having my computer made it hard to take a constant pull and for how long so I pulled off when I thought I needed to. We were back into the pack pretty quickly and I tried to slide into the pack near the front again and get some recovery. As the race started coming to the end and the lap cards came out, I was sitting up towards the front 2nd-4th wheel or so throughout the laps. I was thinking this was a great spot and I might actually throw down a sprint this week. But then with 2 to go, suddenly I found myself in like 20th place. I don't really know what happened, I must've missed the memo. So from then on it was just hold position, I wasn't comfortable trying to move forward with everybody else going all sketchy trying to do the same thing. I accelerated to the line and came across somewhere in the low teens.

Then Saturday was the State Individual Time Trial. This is a road event where you basically go as fast as possible all by yourself over a set course. Our course was 40 Kilometers, or about 24.8 miles. You go 12.4 miles out, turn around across the road, and come 12.4 miles back to where you started. I hadn't been caring about this event until I got called out by a "friend" to come race him, so not being one to back down I kept him on the ropes as long as possible(to watch him fume, lol) and then registered and showed up Sat. morning. I had been offered a Time Trial bike to borrow, it was too small for me but I figured I'd give it a try and see if I could make it work. I rode it twice and made some adjustments the week before, but I never really got comfortable on it. I was advised to go ahead and ride it, so I did. For reference, on a TT bike you are very scrunched and hunched to get as aerodynamic as possible. However, this changes all your muscle memory and usage so you can actually lose power if you're not used to the positioning. Having only ridden it twice for less than an hour at a time, I obviously wasn't ready to go all out for over an hour in that position. So I'm the first guy to go in my category Sat. morning, I started at 9:24AM. It was already blazing hot, I was trying to stay in the shade of the starting tent(the start line was actually in the sunshine) as long as possible. The starter said 45 seconds so I sauntered to the start line and started preparing to go off. I had just clipped into one pedal when I heard him start counting from 5 and I was like "crap man!!!" So I jumped into the other pedal(being held by a start official so you can clip in and be ready to go when it's go time) and I was off!

I had to start my computer on the fly and try to get in a rhythm. This was made harder by the fact that the first three miles include some rollers so you don't really get the chance to get onto the bars and in the zone. I was trying not to go out too hard on advice of my coach, so tried to just stay steady at what seemed like a moderate pace. As I got out of the hills I tried to get comfortable down on the bars and get a good pace going. I was doing ok for a while until my muscles started to complain about the funny motions I was putting them through and I was forced to start backing it down and stretch occasionally to keep them from locking up. This was a drag(literally!!) as I had to get off the bars, stand up and coast, and stretch each leg, costing me valuable seconds. I just tried to focus on getting to the turn, and remind myself to drink regularly. After the turn, the crosswind was now a headwind which just made things worse. The only choice was just to keep pedaling as much as possible, standing to stretch when I had to. I found that looking down at the road and tracking the white line off my left side helped me relax a lot as opposed to stretching my neck to keep my eyes up the road. So I eventually got back to the rollers, and in a moment of weakness I dropped out of the big ring up front and spun up the biggest one at all of about 16mph. What a slacker. Then when I got to the top I tried to shove it back up to the big ring to get to the line and wouldn't you know the chain falls off the ring to the outside!! Oh no!!! Now I've already had a terrible ride and to add insult to injury this happens. I tried to pedal it back on but to no avail, so I was forced to come to an almost complete stop and reach down and put it back on. Luckily I got it without having to stop and dismount, so it was back on the gas to get to the line. Also luck would have it that I got the chain back on just a bit before passing the photographer. So I dropped onto the bars real quick for the photo op and kept pushing towards the line. When the finish tent was in sight I made a hard push for the line, crossing the uphill finish with a final push at 26mph in the bars. SLOW

So that was the order of the day. My muscles below my butt(whatever they're called) hurt like crazy until about Monday, I'm sure due to being too cramped up. But it was fun I guess(how can you call an hour of pain fun?) and I did just manage to beat the challenger so I get to live to fight another day. Hopefully soon there'll be some pics posted to show. Later.