We Brought the Rain With Us (lots of pictures and videos edition)

So, this week was the Wenatchee Omnium. Last year I did this race it was typical Wenatchee weather (absolutely gorgeous and warm). But this year it was only normal weather on Friday and then a Western-Washington-style storm blew in from the southeast of all places and inundated the valley with rain close to monsoon levels.

I'm thinking that the Wenatchee Omnium is going to be a yearly event for me in large part because my parents live over here and love to spoil me when I come over for a while. My dad also loves to take lots and lots of pictures and videos, so this blog post will have a bunch of photos that he took. This year, I got Randy from Tacoma Bike and Andrew from Old Town to come stay over at our family's house. Karly even made it over too!

Getting There

But first a bit about my Friday travels. I was packing up in the morning only to realize I had left my racing license at my office. I realized this at 7am when I had to catch an 8:30am train. I had actually forgot my license at last year's Wenatchee and had to buy day licenses for cat 5. But now I'm a Cat 3 so I needed it. I headed out of my apartment at 7:27 to try to catch a 7:30 Max to my office. I made it on that Max with 3 seconds to spare. I biked to the office got my license and caught the 7:46 train back downtown. At this point I decided the only way I'd make the 8:30 Amtrak would be if I put my big duffel bag on my aero bars and biked to the train station. I did so hitting the green wave down Everett with one hand on the handlebars, the other hand holding the bag and clamping it all together with my chin. Got to the station at 8:10 and found a nice train friend to chat with.

Next up Randy and I drove over to Wenatchee from Tacoma. We got there and went for a ride around the loop trail to the crit course. On the way I managed to get 2 flats and remembered that that was why I hadn't gotten more into cycling when I was younger - along with competitive cycling not being that popular in general. Randy and I rode the crit course and Randy was in disbelief about how technical it was. Due to impending rain expected tomorrow Randy was confident in his decision to bail on riding in the crit.

Time Trial

There was a bit of confusion on when my actual start time was going to be, so I ended up arriving at the sign-in 3 minutes after my start time. After enough arguing with the organizer and officials, they gave me a new start time that happened to be 30 seconds after Ian Mensher (an utter beast of a rider). Ian didn't have a 30 second guy, he didn't have a minute man and he still passed at least 5 riders. At mile 1 he was 15 seconds ahead of me, mile 1.5 he was 40 seconds ahead and then I only saw him again after the turnaround.



I was really eying this TT with great importance since it was the first TT I would do that I had also done last year and thus compare my times. Well, I ended up 48 seconds slower than last year and was VERY disappointed until I saw that even Ian Mensher was about a minute slower than his time last year. The Cat 3 winner was 90 seconds slower than last year. So maybe I did do better given the circumstances.

Crit

Randy and I were hanging out for a while watching the other fields race. I also got to meet smack-talker-extraordinaire Michael Pruitt (aka PruDog). It was pretty chill watching the other racers and also watching Randy do his thing trying to hand a beer off to the KR Masters:

By the time my crit started it was raining and slippery. I made it a point to be near the front in order to avoid the inevitable crashes the first few laps. After a while 2 guys broke away and I was holding on to the chase group of about 8 people.



The rest of the crit consisted mostly of trying to hang onto the pack. I could hear Randy at corner 3 yelling "Sit in Evan" everytime, and with the way my chest felt I was content with doing so. When the final sprint came and I didn't have one and took 8th.



Road Race

Next up was the road race and I was getting hopeful that the rain would let up since it appeared like it would do so according to the weather radar. WRONG! It got worse while the radar showed no rain at all.



My pre-race strategy was to try to commit suicide and gap the field so much before the hills that I'd make it up by the time they did. This worked well until 1/5th of the way up the climb at which point I was caught and by the time I summited I was close to last. At this point I could see other people riding back down the hill just giving up. So I decided that maybe if I stuck it out I could sneak into the omnium points.

So I stuck it out. On the climb of lap 2 I got passed by the masters field, on lap 3 I got passed by the ladies field and barely held off Trish until the 4th lap when the 1/2s passed me. Talk about demoralizing! Adding to the excitement was that the corner at the bottom of the hill got so flooded that we all had to ride thru 2 inches of water.



On the final straightaway I called out another 3 for drafting off a 1/2 and then decisevely put him in his place in our dueling sprint for 20th or something. Unfortunately, 15 other masochists in the 3s stuck it out, so no omnium points for me in the road race.



Here is an open smack-talking message to all you climber twigs:

Haha, very nice job in the hillclimb you little rats! Good thing that is the only true hillclimber's race in the northwest for the whole season. I will crush all of you so hard in the crits that you will go crying home to your wife or mommy, request a downgrade and wonder why you even started racing in the first place!

And to show that I mean business I am taking this whole next week off the bike to recover my strength just in time to go kick some butt down at the Umpqua crit at the end of May.