Tour of Wishy Washiness

Well another edition of the Tour of Walla Walla is in the bag. This one was just good, not great.  I have typically done well at this race.  Last year I won the final stage and got 6th GC as a Cat 3.  And the year before that I was newly a Cat 3 and got 6th on the final stage.  This year would be tougher for sure since I'd be doing it as a Cat 2.

Waitsburg

This year it was 4 times up the hill. First time was neutral as always. The p12 field got the whole road which was pretty cool. On lap 2 I bridged up with Ian Mensher to a break which shortly thereafter got caught. I made sure I was towards the front before each time up the hill and managed to hold on. The final climb was just holding on as best I could, but I managed to get the time of the first group which was great.  My Mom and Dad came down and watched the stage and took a bunch of pictures.



The pack going up the hill.


At the finish, barely holding onto the back of the first group.


Chowing down on Mom's applesauce after the race.

TT

I had ridden my TT bike exactly once since Eugene back in August. And that one time was on the Thursday before the race. I had had it stored upside down in one of my bike lockers that wasn't under a garage so it got wet in there. When I pulled it out it had a spiderweb and spider crawling over the handlebars. Anyways, I had hoped to ride somewhere under 20 minutes but got 21:03. I may have gone out too hard, not quite sure.





Logistics

This year I departed from my usual arrangement of sharing half a bed with some random racer I just met that day and stayed at a host house where me and my carpool buddy got our own bedrooms.  That was nice.  My parents headed home, so I got no pics of the rest of the weekend for ya.


The Crit

This crit ranks as one of the scariest crits I know. I had a great start, except then I decided to chase Trevor Spahr I believe for a $60 prime still on the first lap where we both got caught on the backside. I think I did one more breakaway attempt and then I was done and in damage control mode. 30 minutes to go and I was anxiously looking at the clock to see it count down to 0. The final lap I had to sprint to stay up with the lead group which stretched nearly single file seemingly all the way to the final corner.  That night we went back to the host house and I stayed up way too late watching a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Kellogg Hollow

It was the final race and I had to try some kind of breakaway, it's just what I do.  I sat in except for positioning for the climbs.  On lap 2 I tried twice to get away and stayed off the front for a bit the second time I tried, but nobody joined me and that was that.  Then I got a little bit of a cramp and knew it was damage control time again.  On lap 3, Hagens Berman lined up and set a pace that dropped a lot of people including me.  I was in a decent sized chase group which got whittled down even further.  And that was that.

Post-race thoughts

Well, I ended up 37th GC out of 120ish riders.  On the one hand, that isn't such a bad result.  I was able to mainly stay with the lead group each race which is good.  On day one I bridged up to a break with Ian Mensher - the same Ian Mensher that utterly crushed me in the Time Trial at Wenatchee just 2 years ago.  Now I'm at that level, heck I even finshed a few groups ahead of Ian on the final stage.  Another cool thing was that my TT time would've been good enough for 2nd place in Cat 3.  But on the other hand I got dropped on the final day and was just barely hanging on in the rest of the races.  My TT time was wayyy back in the 1/2s.  So I dunno I kinda feel like pack fodder at times in the 1/2s but then again I'm hanging within the p12 pack.  Well, we'll see what happens next.

Oh I do know one thing, I'm feeling a little more disciplined now.  I started doing my core and stretching again which I have been not doing nearly enough at all.  And another thing, just this morning I looked at my speedplay cleats and noticed a screw was missing.  I had actually brought replacement cleats to Walla Walla, but if I had tried to replace them there, I would've been screwed since I didn't have the right length of screws for the replacements.  And one last final thought, I resolve to never ever watch a Quentin Tarantino movie again because it is the same worthless never-happens-in-real-life waste of time plot of an outcast vigilante who goes to fight some despicable nemesis but the vigilante has to kill at least 100 people in the process.  No value is added to my life by watching those movies.  No more.