There seemed to be a decent amount of good racers there, Beardsley and his team, Bedford and his team, Liberles, and a few other threats. I started at back with Rocky. It was a fast pace with lots of corners, so there were very few places to move up. However, I eventually found that the back stretch was a good place to move up. But, I didn't get to the front until 30 minutes in. Once I got to the front we had just caught Trevor on his move from the gun, but then I drifted back again. I was feeling like the efforts were really getting to me and it felt borderline Texas hot (ok, not really, but it was warm) and my water bottles had too much sugar.
Nonetheless, with 8 to go I focused on trying to move up again. On 5 to go I took the final corner on the inside as far inside as I could which helped me move up about 10 positions. On the back, I suddenly had an opening to the front. Klipper was sitting 2nd wheel and the pace slowed, so I attacked thinking this may distract people from watching Klipper. Apparently they were still so focused on Klipper that at least Beardsley and Liberles didn't even see me attack. The rest of the laps I just rode as hard and as safely as I could. I also made sure that I was counting the laps correctly and the final lap I looked back and saw no other racers despite the hecklers chanting "they're coming up!" I checked the lap board and it said "00", so I did the best poster finish I could.
Photo credit: Dave RothKlipper was waiting to see the finish and did a victory lap or two with me. After the race I got to see my friends who came to watch me race and took some pictures with my teammates. We all had dinner over at the Lucky Lab and were eventually joined by the women's winner, Jade Wilcoxson. Everything felt awesome about that night except it would have been better if another Guinness rider was also on the podium picture.
Photo Credit: Josh Liberles's Girlfriend
So there, after no pictures of me winning in Walla Walla or Texas, the third time is the charm for getting a good picture of me finishing. Ha, that makes it one win in each state this year. Cool!
Post-race Embarrassment
I actually am pretty embarrassed by a number of things that happened after the race. The first thing is listening to a heckler in the crowd who suggested I wear my piece of bread like a crown on my head. I immediately saw at least 3 faces including Rocky's in the crowd express disgust at this major hygiene violation. I would have shared the bread, but nobody else wanted to eat it after that, except me.
The next thing is that I was wearing last year's jersey. This would have been ok, except our big sponsor this year of Athlete's Lounge now has a prominent logo on the front of this year's jersey. I apologized to Scott at Athlete's Lounge for this faux pas.
And now, me winning is THIS BIG DEAL. I made up for the lack of winning finish line pictures and then some at this race. I'm even on the front page of OBRA right now. So now EVERYBODY knows who I am so it is going to be 10 times harder to sneak away. At least 2 people immediately recognized me out of the blue at PIR this week.
But maybe that is a good thing because I have gotten some flack for this race victory from Oregon Cycling Action:
The field pulled back Sheagley and Edgergton and seemed capable of reeling in Siroky, but confusion about how many riders remained up the road stalled the chase and allowed the Guinness rider to solo in about 10 seconds ahead of the field. Steven Beardsley, who took the bunch sprint for second, momentarily thought he had won before realizing Siroky had finished first. Josh Liberles (HP Chiro/Alpine Mortgage Planning) couldn’t get past Beardsley in the field sprint and finished third.Oh, and Lang Reynolds rates the Baker City Race where I got 3rd as one of his "top 10 stupidest races."
So hopefully bike racing will be hard again and that will make my next victory that much more special. Please Oregon Peleton, pay attention to me next time so that I can win while you are giving your hardest effort. Here is a pro-tip for all of you who have trouble figuring out I am up the road: if the follow car or police motorcycle in the crit is not within sight, it means somebody is up the road!
No comments:
Post a Comment