(Just want cool stuff? Here’s the helmet cam video from the OSU Crit.)
Friday: Pick up the van packets from motor pool. Driving, blah. CWU guys show up at ~10pm. We have some fun, eat some cookies, go to bed.
Saturday: UO Road Race
Jaime and I get up 5:45, eat, load the car and we’re off to Elmira. I’m a little late. I have the liability waivers. I run around, help out. Brian from Whitman breaks his collarbone and wrist. Ouch. I eat some more, drink some more, and as it’s almost time for the race, it starts raining. Oh well. Now it’s race time, and it’s stopped raining mostly. We roll out. I’m all smiles. The field jokes about the collective lack of training and how slow some of us are. The field feels good, the group feels good, my bike feels good. I feel good. The lead car pulls away and I’m rolling at ~150W at the front. Nobody goes for the reins, so I chat with Scott from Willamette at the front. I attack to stretch my legs out before the first climb and the super tall WWU guy (Ben?) comes along. I ask, “are you into this, or are you just stretching your legs like me?” He smiles and we get caught the first time up the hill. It was nice. Yay bikes!
We round the first corner. Jaime’s the marshal. I wave. WWU guy attacks. I remember saying, “Wow. That is the most ridiculous sprint I have ever seen.” Turns out, that guy was fast. No one chased, and he got about a minute pretty fast. A lap later, he was still away and it’d gone up to 2 minutes. I’m not totally clear on what happened, but eventually 4 more guys went up the road, and the original WWU guy flatted out. The pace was not very fast (hence the huge time gaps to the break) and with two laps to go, I decided I want to make the race hard. Going up the finishing climb, I went to the front and dialed it in at 350-370W. This was enough to get a good gap up the climb with two other guys. We got a minute, I think, before we got to the first climb of the new lap and I got dropped. Hard. Ouch. Bad. The pack looked pretty close when I finally dragged myself over the top. I tucked and went down the hill. I couldn’t see them anymore. Crap. I had to actually do some work now. I settled in at ~240-280W and held a small gap for half a lap, then I got caught at the bottom of the finishing climb with one lap to go. I didn’t get dropped up it because everyone was going slow. Andrew and Azul, my two teammates, were chilling. I was broken. There were four guys up the road. Almost everyone was represented. The pace was slow. The next lap was pretty calm. We came to the base of the finishing climb for the last time and no one attacked. We rolled up the climb easy-like… probably gearing up for the 200m sprint. Well, I thought, “There’s no way I’ll take a 200m uphill sprint. I’m just going to make it really hard.”
So I did. With ~500m to go, I ramped it up and went for broke. It strung out real fast- good. Pain. I was ready to fall off my bike, but the finish line was really, really, really far away. Two guys were solidly on my wheel- not a good sign. I clicked one more cog down and stood up- only to quickly sit back down. Ouch. Now the line seemed even farther away. How is that possible? The two guys on my wheel pop around me and fight for 5th and 6th. I notice Azul near me now. I can’t let it slip! I do. Rats. Now UI guy is closing, but I hold him off for 8th. So tired. I say Hi to my parents and brother, watch the silly crash at the end of the Men’s A finish and go back to the staging area. I chamois-out and eat. TTT in a bit.
And it starts raining. It rains just completely stupidly hard. It’s INSANE. Stuff blows over. Scrambling. Then it stops. My mental capacity for racing is… well… low, to say the least. And my 3 hrs/wk of training is really going to bat for the two-events-in-a-day thing. Not. But we race, I’m slow, and we get dead last and a couple points. Was it worth putting my plastic rain jacket on first because everything else was sopping wet? Sigh, I guess so.
Sunday: OSU Criterium
Wake up at 4am. Pack, eat. Get picked up by Derek at 5am. Drive to motorpool. Put bike racks in the van, load up bikes, drive to Club Sports, pick up the rest of the team and their bikes. We’re on the road by 6am- awesome! Driving on I-5 in the dark, pouring rain in a huge, white van is not fun. But we make it, Will takes the wrong exit, but we make it. I blow the registration stuff. Eva and I get coffee. Other nonsense happens. It’s time to race! I kit up, ride around a bit, and get a healthy amount of teasing about my helmet cam. My favorite, by far, was from Rick: “Do you know that you’ve got a camera on your head?”
The start was not fast, which took me off guard. So I attacked. I stayed away for a lap or so, then got pulled back and sat in the top 5. There was a big acceleration, I followed, but then everyone stopped. So I attacked. Clever? Absolutely not. I get caught again very quickly, so I sit in. Then I get really really really tired and get dropped. Three guys go down, one breaks his carbon handlebars in half. Only minor injuries. I finish 11th, behind one guy solo OTF and the main group of 9. The guy that won? Same guy that won solo on Saturday. Sandbagger!
Okay, now what everyone really wants: HELMET CAM VIDEO!
