pleasure to burn
only a crit today. a 90 minute crit. do one of those and those little 60 minute crits at home don't seem like much. actually, they haven't seemed like much for some time. maybe i'll win one some day.
i'm drinking some espresso from my bialletti. good times. it's a pleasant morning in arkansas. percy the fat longhaired dachshund is curled up next to me. we're watching "wet hot summer". it's about summer camp. i'm at summer camp right now. we've decided to stay in fayetteville until next thursday before we head to russellville. the wonderful people that we're staying with have offered us the use of their house next week while they're in costa rica. it's a great house with a nice back yard. i think we're going to have a bbq.
so, yesterday we finished things off with a 2.5 mile up hill individual time trial. our road race on friday finished at about 700 and the saturday race started at 800 and lasted about three and a half hours. total mileage of 200 in less than 24 hours. and then the time trial. in my warm-up, i hit 100 miles. so yeah, i didn't really have that next level to push myself to. of course, nobody did. i actually didn't do that bad. i was like two minutes back of the winner, danny pate from jelly belly. but, i still finished in the top half of the field. i'm way ahead of gaggioli in the overall, so i've got that going for me, which is nice. anyway, the other guys all did better than me. carl got about 20th, dustin got 22nd, solomon and owen were in the top 40. we're shooting for a high team finish to get some money.
the mullet count is up to three for the trip.
second entry for the day. it's late at night. quite late, actually. i can't sleep, so i'm going to finish this out and hope that i'll fall asleep.
for the crit we had one strategy, and that was for the team competition. it was paying 5 deep. the overall paid 40 deep. dustin, solomon and carl were the only ones who hadn't screwed their overall positions with a bad day or two. so, our strategy was to make sure they finished the race. if they finished then we had a good chance at a high team finish as well and getting them into the money.
the crit course was quite challenging. it was long, for one thing. it took about 4 or so minutes to go around the course. it was set to be a 90 minute crit, as i mentioned earlier. there were eight corners. there was a long steep downhill which transitioned to a flat section. that lead to an easy grade up hill and then a right hand turn to a 200 meter steep hill to the finish. continue with another shallow uphill section and it was back to going down a bit until the long steep downhill. i think we all got reasonably good starting positions. i promptly lost a fair amount of ground when i wasn't quite into the mental space of an aggressive pro crit. unlike at home, you really have to protect your position. on the uphill and after where the group wasn't single file a little gap would be quickly filled by somebody looking to get in. health net quickly started attacking two at a time. the top guys were only tens of seconds off of the jelly belly guy who was highest ranked after the time trial, so time bonuses and any gap in the crit could determine the outcome.
as far as teamwork, there wasn't a whole lot. i did however, get to save carl once. it's always nice to do something for the team besides offer moral support. with the hill it was the sort of course where rough lap could catch up to you on the hill and really send you backwards. one time up the hill i saw carl losing position fast as the group was splitting up around him. i eased up a bit and kept looking back so that he'd get onto my wheel. at first, he didn't want to but when i kept looking back he made the effort. i closed the gaps in front of us and kept him in contact. when it slowed up a bit i put in a hard effort and pulled him up as far as i could. he felt great after that and credited me with keeping him in the race. gotta earn your pay, huh? of course, the whole race was blowing apart. after only fifteen minutes of racing i heard the announcer mention that we were the elite group, which i properly interpreted to mean that half of the racers must have been blown out. of the 140 or so starters only about 15 finished in the lead group while all the others were lapped.
when bike racers crash, they don't get scraped, they get burned. the skin just burns right off. well, on one of the laps i took a corner pretty hot and was forced into a really far outside like which i just couldn't hold. when i came over the crest in the road and it became off camber, i simply lost my rear wheel. i slid fast across the pavement and stopped at the sidewalk. i got up and got off the course and assessed things. a wonderful volunteer carried my bike up to the start finish for me and i calmly went to the pit where my bars and shifters were straitened out and was pushed back into the race. let's keep the crash jokes to a minimum, folks.
i aint no quitter. i continued trooping on for a while and eventually somebody opened a gap that i couldn't close and i was off the back. i rode with a group for a while but did a few too many pulls when nobody else would and came off on the hill. i was out there for the workout more than anything so i did the laps as intervals, using the hill as a max effort and recovering on the downhill. i eventually lapped owen and we rode together for the end. the crowd gave us a big cheer when we were finally done.
in the end dustin finished with the lead group while solomon and carl held on in the second group. distin was our highest place rider at a respectable 14th or 18th. solomon and carl were in the top 30. that got us fifth in the team competition. we beat jelly belly and monex as well as some other legitimate pro teams for that. nice. for finishing, owen and i moved up to 44th and 45th overall. just out of the money! damn!
i got my wounds cleaned out by a doctor there at the race. it's just too painful to do myself. it takes somebody who doesn't care to be ruthless enough to get in deep and really get it cleaned out. oh, that hurt. there was a crowd of gawkers. i wouldn't know, i was in the pain closet with my eyes closed, fighting the nausea.
five dollar all you can eat mexican and beer was for dinner. we ate and drank more than our five dollars worth!
