Fun Fast Weekend

Friday afternoon I left work an hour early and went out to the TT course with Robin to mark the start and finish. I drove while Robin motorpaced so that he could use the computer on his bike, which was set to measure kilometers, to mark the finish. After that, we discovered that the portable toilets had been put in the wrong place, so we had to muscle them up onto the trailer and drive them around to where they belonged, all the way fighting off mosquitos the size of small airplanes. Luckily, the toilets were still unused and we didn't get any of that smelly scented stuff on us!

Saturday morning it was up at 4:30 a.m. to load up the Volvo with race stuff. Realdo arrived right on time and we were off to the TT course about 40 minutes away. Registration started at 6:30 a.m. and we went nonstop as fast as we could registering riders until well after 7:30. Luckily we had some great volunteers helping out. There were about twice as many riders as I had expected, and we ran out of one-day license forms because there were a lot of local triathletes and other riders who don't race a lot who were attracted to this fun and non-threatening event.

One local rider who reads this blog stopped by the regstration desk and handed me a new inner tube! I guess I do get a lot of flats! We ended up with 79 two-person teams registered. I changed quickly into my riding clothes, grabbed the bike and rode to the start line without a warmup. 30 seconds later, Robin said "GO" and we were off. Realdo pulled for the first mile while I tried to warm up, and when I looked down we were going 29 mph. With the light tailwind, we were going between 26.5 and 27 most of the way out, with a few occasional spurts up to 28. Realdo was incredibly steady, and since he's about a foot taller than I, every time I would finish a pull and drop back it was like sitting down in a soft easy chair. We zipped around the turnaround neatly and had to ease up a bit on the way back because of the headwind, although we still held 26-27 most of the way, surging up to 30 or so by the finish.We ended up with a 55:33, which is a pretty decent time for a couple of guys who haven't trained for this sort of thing. Realdo is a real classy rider who's raced all over the place and it shows. I didn't have much time to relax, though, because as soon as I finished the 40k time trial, I had to go work on the results. Dan and I spent the next hour and a half typing in names and club names and start times and finish times. It was really hard to read the LCD screen outdoors, and that made it go even more slowly, but we got everything done pretty quickly.

Our time was good for 6th overall and 3rd in our 35+ age group. The winning time was a 52:50, which was pretty damned fast. So we won $20, which we spent at the gas station Subway Sandwiches on the way home!

After I got home it took me a couple of hours of solid work to get the results up on the website. We should have some photos later in the week. I still have a couple of hours of work left on that to update the LCCS points.

Sunday morning I could hear thunder as I awoke, which wasn't very reassuring because there was a local parking lot criterium that day. Luckily, the rain stopped around 7:30 and all the races went off as planned, although turnout was low. I had to make a quick trip back to the house because the promoter forgot to make any copies of the official release forms. Luckily I had some left over from the day before.

I rode the Cat. 1,2,3 race that started around 1:00 p.m. and it was a lot of fun. Despite the small field, it was very animated. Malcolm Schuler put up a $20 prime for the first lap, and one result of that was that Mike Corcoran and Renaldo were off the front by the second lap. Since most of the pack was on either Mike's or Realdo's team, nobody chased until Rob Konrad took off in pursuit about a lap later. This was one of those "shoula coulda woulda" things for me. I knew I should go with him, but I hesitated for a moment because I didn't want to end up pulling the whole pack up to Renaldo, who I figured could beat Mike in a sprint. The whole NBO team started trying to shut down the pack. I guess they were figuring on having Noel win the pack sprint, but even so I wasn't figuring on Mike being able to get better than second in the break, maybe even third. It did, however, force me to do a lot of work at the front, including a few small attacks to see if maybe I could split off a smaller and more manageable group, but it was not to be. Meanwhile, my teammate Branden, who I was figuring to do well in a sprint, was feeling bad and ended up dropping out. Much of the time I was working at the front, it was in an effort to force the NBO guys to work so that Branden would have a better shot at the finish. Oh well! So I dropped back for a while as the breakaway started coming up behind us on the short 0,5 mile course. Just as they were about to lap us, I attacked once again just in case I could split off a little group that could latch onto them as they went by, but then ended up just getting in with the pack and waiting it out for the sprint. So the rest of the race I did what I could to help Realdo out by going to the front when he would get stuck out in the wind up there.

Toward the end of the race I noticed that something felt kind of mushy when I would get up off the saddle. As I found out after the finish, my front tire was slowly going flat. I guess I had about 40 psi in it by the finish. But low tire pressure wasn't my only problem at the end.

For most of the last three laps, Eddie Delgado stayed at the front riding tempo with me on his wheel. It was sweet. When we hit the back stretch on the final lap I knew riders would start coming around, so I was ready for it and got a good wheel going into the second to last turn. Right at the apex of the turn, Rob comes in on me hard and cuts me off against the pylons. These things happen in criteriums. I had three choices: hit the pylons (and crash), hit Rob (and crash), or hit the brakes (and maybe crash). I chose Door Number Three and of course when I touched the brakes in the middle of the turn at around 25 mph my rear wheel broke loose. It was only my strong desire to avoid road rash, and my latent gymnastics abilities, that kept me off the pavement. Realdo was behind and to the right and had to ease up too just as the sprint started. Amazingly, he not only recovered, he powered past about four riders in the final 100 meters and won the race. He also won a couple of primes along the way! I was impressed. Anyway, I still managed 4th place, coming past Noel who eased up at the line.

It was a lot of fun to have two races in town on the same weekend. Everyone liked the crit course out at Zephyr stadium, too. To me it actually seemed a lot like riding on the track because none of the turns were very technical and it stayed pretty fast.

Now if I can just find time to get the paperwork done and the LCCS points posted, I can get back to my paying job for a few days before I have to leave for Iowa on Thursday. Man, I wish there was a race there next weekend!!