Oh man, I'm now in my third week of traveling up to Washington for various bike races. The results are mixed. I'm writing this section of this blog just after Stage 1 of the Capital Stage race.
Mutual of Enumclaw
Well, I thought I'd do a little better than I did. I drove up Saturday morning after getting very little amounts of sleep. My time trial wasn't very good. I got 42nd. Meh. I went to a dinner with my Seattle teammate Bart and had the works (scramble, hashbrowns and toast), but then was still hungry so I had some blueberry pancakes too. Then I took a nap.
In the crit I hung on and finished with the pack at 29th place. I then went back to the house of the gracious Rian and April Barta where I proceeded to sleep for 11 hours. I didn't wear my compression tights which was a mistake cause my legs didn't feel good the next day. I got dropped on the climb on lap 1, 2, 4 and 5. Lap 3 I hung with the field. I caught back on on laps 1, 2 and 4, but was on my own after lap 5. The weather was bad but not miserable. My shoe was falling apart with the sole tearing off from the rest of the shoe. I still finished in 30th place out of 62 in that race and ended up 31st overall.
Why such low results after the previous weekends?
Canadians. That's why.
Ski to Sea
Brent really twisted my arm into doing this by sending me a total of 2 emails trying to recruit me. I was a bit wishy washy about it, but decided to go for it. I took the Bolt Bus up and had a leisurely time in Kenmore/Seattle. I went on an easy ride where I got stung by a bee for the first time ever on a bike ride. I met up with GP and watched the Champions League Final which was a great game.
I was getting as prepped as possible for the race the night before and didn't socialize as much as the others. Got some decent sleep and was off the next morning. We didn't have the strongest legs prior to me, so I began as the 313th rider to start the road race course. It took me wayyy too long to fasten my timing chip to my wrist. Gotta remain stopped for that next time. It was rainy. My newly purchased TT helmet with a visor was fantastic for the conditions. I was oblivious to the rain up on top except for the occasional loud drop.
That helped me maintain a very aero position throughout. I passed so many people and only 1 person was able to hang on to my draft. My goal was to get top 10 and under 90 minutes which I accomplished with a 5th place 1:28:50 time. By the time I finished, our team was 99th so I must have passed 214 other racers. I showed all those other guys what was up, but I somehow don't think they really cared.
Capital Stage Race
I woke up at 8:15am on Saturday at my Great Aunt's house in Olympia and went upstairs. MJ asked me when my race was and I was like "10:13am... oh crap, I better get going." I had Ian Mensher ahead of me for my 30 second guy and I didn't see him when I finished, so yeah. After all this I went to a fancy cute breakfast place and ordered my now usual two plates. There's something deceiving about these large plates small portions places as I suspect that somehow they pack the same amount of calories into the food. Anyways, I really need to take a nap now.
Righto, off to the crit and I managed to win a $50 prime! Probably spent too much effort chasing down breaks and I ended up in the second finishing group and lost 9 seconds. Still tho, way better than
last year. Some other things about the crit worth noting: Trevor Spahr is hardcore for finishing the race with the field after racing 53 minutes after crashing hard just 7 minutes in. David Richter gave us Oregon riders the burn of the century in his post-race winner interview as follows:
Erik (promoter): "So David, there were a lot of people rooting for Stephen Bradford and someone bet me a dollar that he'd win."
David Richter: "haha, yeah well I was going to wear my Oregon State Criterium Championship Jersey... but no yeah, this is a great race..."
In the road race I attempted to mix things up and not just wait for mile 65 and those three hills. I got myself into a breakaway at mile 60 and tried fairly hard to stay away. Unfortunately, it was just a two person breakaway and the KR army made sure we weren't out of their sight. We got caught going up the final hill and it turned out to be just like last year. Small gaps opened up. Colin Gibson closed one up by doing a super-aero tuck. Then a bunch of others closed the gap so it was about 30 of us for the finish. Colby laid down an impressive move at about 700m to go and gapped everyone except Dan Harm and Ian Baldwin. I was 15th on the day and 19th GC. Maybe one of these days I'll get a podium in a Washington state p12 race.
