Watching the Tour de France 2015: Day 2

On this stage the racecourse started in Saint Jean de Maurienne, did the Col du Chasy then the Col de la Croix de Fer, then the Col du Mollard and finally finished at a ski resort up the hill from Saint Jean de Maurienne.  My plan for the day was to bike down into Saint Jean de Maurienne, try to say hi to some riders, then bike back up the opposite way of the race course as far as I could until the race came by.  Laurel would hang out on her own because she didn't want to descend with her bike that had crappy brakes.

I got up around 8am and had a relatively lazy morning after finally heading out on my bike just before 10am.  I started descending down towards Saint Jean de Maurienne, but made it no more than 4 kilometers until I was stopped by Police saying that the road was closed to everyone except pedestrians and official TDF vehicles.  A bunch of other cyclists were also stopped along with me, but after some translation barrier we all started biking again for another 20 meters where we were again stopped by another police officer saying that the road was closed.  This sucked quite a bit.  I decided to just head back to the campsite to find Laurel and we would watch the race together from the top of the Col.  I was stopped every 50 meters on my way back by more police officers.  I tried to explain to some of them that I was just going back to my campsite.  Some of them made me walk, some let me bike, some kind of ignored me.  It was hit and miss, but I got back to the campsite and was somewhat grumpy.



The times that the caravan and riders come by always seemed very accurate and published a long time in advance, but information about the exact time of closure was more of a ground truth.  I could not find online information anywhere about the road closures.  There were some signs on the Col du Glandon and then I found out in person encountering the police officers.  It seems like the general rule of thumb is that the roads are closed for driving at 10am everywhere on the course.  However, for any popular climbing part of the course, it seemed best to get all bicycling completely finished before 10am.  For the flat areas it seemed like it was more or less possible to bicycle on the road up until the caravan came through.  Although the next day at Alpe d'Huez was much more biking friendly.

So a bit bummed out, I checked the results from yesterday since I still hadn't found out.  Then we got ready for the day and hiked about 5km and 400 meters vertical from our campground to the Col de la Croix de Fer.  We walked up the road all the way and wherever there were police officers they were telling bike riders to dismount and walk, but wherever the were no police officers, bike riders were whizzing past.  Campervans were parked all alongside the road again in any place possible no matter how precarious the situation.







We happened to be lucky this year in that the Tour came by our area 3 days in a row.  It was already planned to do so for 2 days on the Col du Glandon.  However, some landslides forced the organizers to alter the course to come up the Col de la Croix de Fer and then back down within a few meters of the Col du Glandon for a third time.







When we got to the top it wasn't as crowded as I had thought, but there were still tons of people at the top.  Laurel and I bought some schwag.  I got a TDF sweatshirt and Laurel a T-Shirt for her Dad.  We then sat up on a hill beside the road and waited for the caravan to come through.  We could see the cars coming in the distance as they crested the Col du Glandon.  We rushed down to the road to see them come by and get some free schwag.  Everyone was going crazy for the free schwag no matter their age.  Laurel told me that there was French announcements telling people to watch after their kids that they wouldn't run into the road for that free keychain just to get hit by the next car in the caravan.

We ended up scoring one yellow hat, a pack of coffee powder, 2 bob hats that we didn't really want anyways, 3 polka dot cycling caps (we gave 2 away to some kids), a stir stick (I think?) and a bag that had ice cream drawn on the side.  There were typically 3 or 4 vehicles associated with each brand driving by.  All of them either had a young good looking person shouting things over a loudspeaker in French, or blaring techno dance music, sometimes both.  Most of them also had people who were throwing schwag out.  Some tried to aim out over the crowd, but others were just throwing them straight on the ground beside the cars which were all driving at about 20mph through the crowds.  A lot of times some schwag would land dangerously close to the cars driving by and we had to make sure we wouldn't get runover before trying to pick it up.  One time a middle aged man underestimated the speed/distance of an oncoming vehicle and ran right into the middle of the road in front of the caravan causing the driver to slam on his brakes and gave him the French "what the heck are you doing wave/look".  I think that was to get a BIC hat.



After the caravan had passed by, we decided to go walk down the descent a bit so that we could watch the riders zoom by.  We found a fairly dangerous blind corner that got tighter as it wound around.  We could also see 5 more switchbacks down the hill from this place.  There were a few official cars that came zooming by and some of them were squealing their wheels.  The corner was also pretty fun because two guys were dressed up as French speed cameras who were waiving at all police vehicles to slow down.











Once all the helicopters started whirring above we knew the riders were close.  The first to zoom by was Pierre Roland who was then followed shortly by Vincenzo Nibali.  Nibali negotiated the corner probably the best out of everyone.  I don't think he even braked as he took a sharp inside line and flared out to the very edge of the road as he started to pedal again.  He was followed very closely by the group with Froome.  It was a pretty good race it seemed.  Riders were coming through in small groups all the way until the very last big group of riders.









After all that we quickly hicked down some trails back to the campground's restaurant where we were able to watch the final 20km of the race on a tv at the restaurant.  After having a beer and some food I just felt to lazy and early annoyances in the day made me have no motivation to ride my bike.

Watching the Tour de France 2015: Day 1

Looking at the course and taking into account Laurel's willingness to bike certain distances.  I decided that we should try to go climb the Lacets du Montvernier, a very picturesque and very vertical set of switchbacks about 15km before the end of the course.  We would park our van in a town just north of there and then bike to the switchbacks and then up them.

We had noticed signs saying that all driving was closed to vehicles on the Col du Glandon pass starting at 10am.  So we headed out from our campsite by the Col de la Croix de Fer around 8am.  It took us a while to drive down the hill because just about every place that someone could park a campervan or pitch a tent, someone had.  Or there were more campervans driving to the remaining spots.  Initially I had thought that parking would be full everywhere in town, but the lot by the grocery store wasn't very full at all, so we parked there.











We got breakfast, got some ice for our remaining food, got our bikes ready and headed out.  We biked along the course without a problem until we got to the Lacets du Montvernier which had been closed down to everyone by the police.  You couldn't hike up there at all, let alone bike up it.  I was frustrated and a bit disappointed, but decided like a lot of other bikers that instead we would bike another route to get somewhat close to the top in hopes of finding a better spot.  That took another 45 minutes or so of riding.  We got to the part just after the switchbacks and again it was closed from the top.  Police were even making spectators leave every spot except for just beside this church up top.  So we settled in along the road just above.  This was at around 12:30pm that we got there.








We then waited a lot.  We had lunch.  We went to the bushes to find a bathroom which happened to have a great view of the switchbacks.  We made friends with a French guy from Marseille who was giving us updates on who was in a breakaway, etc.  He also told us that the caravan was not going to pass by because the turns on the switchbacks were too tight for them.  I also talked to another group of enthusiastic Polish fans who were nearby.  They were a bunch of fun and gave me a Polish beer to drink.








Somewhere around 2:30pm a whole bunch of riders started riding past us.  A lot of them had jerseys saying "2015 Pro Am Tour de France".  It seemed like a lot of them got to ride up the switchbacks with an escort or something.  That made me feel pretty jealous and then mad for not being in that elite class.  Whatever.  Every once in a while some official looking cars with very important people came whizzing by from up the switchbacks.

Finally, at around 5pm, 4 helicopters started whirring and circling above us.  We waved at them in hopes of getting on TV.  The choppers were circling for a while and then finally we saw some official red cars like you see on TV come by.  Then we saw the first rider: Romain Bardet who was in a solo breakaway.  He was followed by his AG2R team car.  After that there were a bunch of other small groups.



















A final group came by maybe as much as 45 minutes after the first rider.  I caught a glimpse of Peter Sagan who was having a conversation with the other riders in that group.  They were followed by a bunch of medic cars and a flatbed towtruck.







After that, I thought it might be cool to try to go down into town to try to find some riders after they had finished.  We got on our bikes and started out towards town.  All of us bikers were stopped in a small village by police until they let us all go down.  Laurel had mentioned that there was some trouble with the brakes on her bike.  They definitely weren't swiss stop brakes as you had to apply an excessive amount of force to get the wheel to stop from turning.  I can't imagine what it would've been like going down a hill.  I whizzed down to the next village without a problem and waited for Laurel.  She came much later walking her bike down in tears about it all.  We still agreed to go try and see the riders as it didn't involve any more descending.



We got into town and it was a massive traffic jam to get into town surprisingly enough.  We made it to the finish area and very briefly caught a glimpse of Chris Froome in his Yellow Jersey getting into a team car to head off to a hotel.  All of the team buses had left already and an army of workers was disassembling the poduim, finish, barricades, basically everything that looked like it was there just for the race.  We walked around a bit more, but then quickly got back on our bikes and biked the 15km or so back to our van.  We drove our van back up the Col du Glandon and Col de la Croix de Fer and had to frequently slow down or stop entirely for climbing cyclists, massive RVs negotiating switchbacks, etc.  We eventually got back to our campground at 9pm.

Watching the Tour de France 2015: Preparation

This is the start of a 4-part blog post about watching the Tour de France. These posts share the experiences I had while watching le Tour for 3 days in the Alps during 2015. This first post sums up the preparations and getting to France, and the course, etc.

Our Motive

Laurel and I decided to do a huge Europe trip for 5 weeks. This was sort of our honeymoon and time inbetween jobs and time inbetween moving to Santa Cruz as well. Laurel and I (mainly Laurel) decided that we needed to move to Santa Cruz. But before that we had decided to go to Europe for at least 2 weeks in the summer. Once we decided to move, I decided it'd be a good idea to take lots of time off in between jobs, etc. Our lease expired at the end of June, so we bought tickets to go to Europe on July 3rd and fly back August 7th. We put all our belongings in storage back in Portland until we'd make the move to Santa Cruz.

Credit Card Churning

In January I discovered the concept of Credit Card Churning. The idea is that most credit cards offer a huge signup bonus (usually after spending a few thousand dollars), but after that, the rewards suck in comparison. Therefore, the best way to maximize the accumulation of points is to get new credit cards and then downgrade or cancel them just before the second year annual fee kicks in. Then maybe a year later you apply for the same credit card again to get the bonus all over again. So, unfortunately that whole thing is a 3 year cycle, so I was unable to truly take advantage of that to the extent of getting free airline tickets to and from Europe.

Nonetheless, I did apply for and get a Barclaycard Arrival plus and the Amex Starwood Prefferred Guest cards. The Barclaycard has been very helpful for buying rail tickets and Airbnb's. I get to redeem travel expenses at a rate of 100 points per dollar. With the signup bonus of 40,000 points and earning 2 points per dollar spent, I've been reimbursed for over $800 in travel expenses. The Amex SPG card was also helpful for booking a hotel, although we decided to do more airbnb's than hotels which had it's pluses and minuses being on a honeymoon and all. We got a hotel in Barcelona with the points from the signup bonuses. After that I'm planning on transferring points to airline miles for the upcoming airline trips to/from PDX to visit family. To sum it up, if you plan on travelling, getting credit cards oriented towards travel will save you a lot of money.

Flights

I sort of wished I would've searched a little harder for cheap airlines to/from Europe. My Frat Bro wrote up a good article about Norweigan Airlines and their cheap flights to Europe. This might have saved us a little bit of money, but we would've had to fly PDX > SFO > ARN > PRG which would've been a bit of a hassle. Instead I found out about Condor airlines which had a direct flight from PDX to Frankfurt. It was only on certain days of the week, so I had to choose the tickets carefully. I thought I would try to be smart and pay for the trip with my Amex card, but at the time it didn't waive foreign transaction fees, so I paid 1% more or so. Oh well. We ended up getting tickets for PDX > FRA > PRG and then OPO > FRA > PDX.

The non-TDF part of the trip

Our trip's plan was to go fly to Prague where my parents would pick us up and drive to Křivoklát where we'd stay for a week. After that our parents would drive us back to the Prague airport where we'd fly to Zürich then take trains from the Airport > Bern > Interlaken > Lauterbrunnen > Wengen. We did an Airbnb in Wengen for 3 nights then had our biggest train day. We went Wengen > Lauterbrunnen > Interlaken > Spiez > Visp > Martigny > Vallorcine > Chamonix > Les Pèlerins. We stayed at a hostel/airbnb in Chamonix 3 nights. Then train from Les Pèlerins > Saint Gervais > Annecy where we airbnb'ed it for 2 nights. Then a train to Lyon for 1 night where the next morning we started our TDF adventure.

After the TDF we'd do Lyon > Barcelona on the train. In a hotel in Barcelona for 3 nights. Then train to Madrid staying with Laurel's friends for 4 nights. Then fly to Porto and stay for 4 nights. Then finally fly back home.

Campervan

I started planning intently for everything in March. The first thing I sought to do was try to reserve a campervan. It was kind of hard trusting a lot of places because I could find very little if any online reviews of the van renting outfits. I did find a few that had vans with showers and toilets, but they all appeared to be reserved already for the time of the Tour. Eventually I found an outfit called WeVan. We reserved a van with a bed for 2 people without bathrooms and figured we'd just wing it from there and park somewhere along the Col du Glandon. Laurel did express concerns about not having a bathroom/shower, etc. Once the Tour was diverted to do the Col de la Croix de Fer a 2nd time, I looked along the course for something, anything that might allow us to reserve a spot for campervans that had bathrooms. Fortunately we found a campground where we reserved a parking spot for our van. Good to go! The place at WeVan rented us a bike rack for the van.

Bike Rentals

I definitely wanted to have a bike for the Tour, but we decided that it would be best to not fly over a huge bike box because of all our other travels. I found a place called RentMyBike which offered a variety of bike rentals in the place where we planned to stay. I got a carbon bike, but we decided to get Laurel a not so awesome bike which ended up being a big mistake. We had good communication with the rental agency and met them on the side of the road in a small town just before Bourg d'Oisans.

ugh

Well, that was up there in the most depressing last two months of bike racing I've had.  Much more awful than last year.

Quick summary of the racing:

I finally got back into racing by doing the Gresham Crit.  I didn't have much of anything for the final lap and got a horrible sunburn since I forgot to put sunscreen on my arms.  The Vancouver crit was particularly frustrating with one of our guys getting in a 4 person break just to end up 5th at the finish.  I was very frustrated with the tactics.  I couldn't do much at all and was tired.

The next weekend I decided that enough was enough with Therapeutic and rejoined Guinness.  Bike racing in the way that the leadership on the team explained it never made sense to me whereas it always did when hearing it from Klipper.  Furthermore, I felt like my attempts to form relationships on the team failed whereas I still had some kind of relationship with Klipper.  In the crit champs and then at the stumptown crit I finished off the back after getting unglued on the final lap in each race.

I did the state time trial and sucked fairly badly.  I did the bridge pedal again.

Eugene was pretty much the most awful weekend I had racing all year.  I was feeling so tired and stressed, had some issues at my host housing and then wasn't the lucky crazy dunce that made the break in Briggs Hill Road Race.  I attacked so stupidly from lap 3 until I couldn't attack anymore and had nothing to show except for nearly passing out next to the team van of my former teammates due to exhaustion - both mentally and physically.  The time trial was also awful.  I don't know my time because the results aren't posted online and because I forgot my garmin at the host house, but when 4 people pass you, you know you had a shitty time.  I was so mentally out of it that I nearly curled up in a ball and sucked my thumb, but ended up driving home skipping the crit.  To top the weekend off, I forgot to return my Zipcar which with the late fee will likely make that weekend cost over $500.  But on the bright side, I didn't break any equipment so I guess it was still cheaper than some races.  Once I got home, my awesome fiance cheered me up and validated my decision to not race when I didn't feel like it and knew I'd get my ass kicked and get beaten into even more of a pulp.

So with that, I'm done racing... at least in a serious way.  I don't think I've been more sore and mentally exhausted than I have before.  I could really use a break, but I'm nearly maxed out of vacation at work.  Oh crap, I need to go to work.

Injured

I haven't been out racing for 3 weeks now.  The first of those weeks I was taking a week-long mid-season break like I've done each year.  It was great.  I spent more time with Laurel including going out to Lincoln City with her whole family for the weekend.

The Monday after all that, I was about to get back into my training regime until I fell off my bike on a training ride getting out of a driveway and hit my hip in a weird way.  Like my bad bike maintenance skills, I guess my body also suffered a bit of a breakdown due to not getting massages and not stretching enough or something.  I was in pain and couldn't ride normally and eventually went to see a physical therapist at guess where... shameless plug for a team's sponsor coming up...  Therapeutic Associates!

The pain has been going away much slower than I would like, but it is what it is.  Jordan Brandon has been abusing me and performing witchcraft practicing the art of physical therapy on me for the past 2 weeks.  It's become quite clear that my body could use a break from all this racing since nearly all of my leg muscles and glute muscles are really really sore and tense.  Jordan made me use a foam roller for the first time and it was terrible in a good way.

I appear to be finally getting better.  I just rode for the first time yesterday in 10 days on my commute to work and then to Laurel's via the MAX and it was exhilarating!  I went as fast as 35mph down a hill!  Weeee.  Today I'm going to try to ride a full 90 minutes.

How have I been handling myself with all this not riding?  Looking at computer screens mostly.  I've been working on a website for my wedding and staying slightly later at work just to get stuff done faster.  I think I'm not going to have any problem filling up the void in my life that'll happen when I don't race next year.

Racing racing racing...

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..."

Post by Catherine Leigh Cooper Photography.

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.

Post by Catherine Leigh Cooper Photography.

Oh look, I have fitness now!

Eugene

So, after Walla Walla I guess that helped my fitness a bit.  Because I made the break didn't sit in and stayed with the contending field at Eugene Roubaix.  Seriously, wtf?  On lap 1 once we turned on to Crow Rd there was a bunch of action as one could expect and I closed a gap to a group that included Liberles, Hoefer and a few others including my favorite new addition to the OBRA peleton, Marek Litinsky.  All of a sudden I look back and we have a massive gap.  Then Bedford and two other contenders bridged up.  And I was like, well, I guess this is the new peleton.  It was so weird.  Basically everyone else dnf'ed and it was an Oregon Cup race.  Most people just quit and didn't get flats.

Post by Portland State Cycling.

Anywho, I had a lot of fun.  Marek was being all aggressive which is great to see because so many OBRAnians just sit in all the time and don't do anything.  Bedford and Liberles both did some attacks, but about 5 of us all from different teams organized into a paceline that chased down Bedford.  It was beautiful.  In the end I got on Marek's wheel for the sprint but couldn't hold on, so I got 4th while he was 3rd.

Post by Portland State Cycling.

Tour de Bloom

I think skipping the mass start hill-climb was an excellent idea in hindsight.  Cause I got to watch the Grand Floral Parade instead:



And I therefore was fresh for the crit.  The course seemed to be a dramatic improvement over the super sketch backside of the previous course and the final corner was super fun.  We went down Orondo on the bricks and passed within a foot of a beer garden crowd at McGlinn's and then raced into the corner going downhill praying each time that my wheel wouldn't slip out and that I wouldn't run out of pavement on Wenatchee ave.  A breakaway got away early and ultimately lapped the field.  I hung out at the front and managed to maintain a good enough position in the final lap to get 10th in the race.



I think I might be starting to get a hang of the crits.  Great Success!

The road race was definitely the most epic race I've done so far this year and may turn out to hold that place.

The race started innocently enough with no rain and it looked like it might stay that way.  We rolled out onto the 102 mile three lap course and there was plenty of jockeying for position.

Once we began heading east we got slammed with a massive crosswind.  Echelons began to form and one started rolling away quite convincingly.  I fought hard to work my way into the next echelon and after a few rotations, the peleton was long gone.  Sucking a wheel was impossible that day.

Our chase echelon was working great with neither the peleton or the first echelon in sight. It was clear that there were some stronger riders than others since we were dropping people from our own echelon as the lap went on. As we rounded the corner to go west we saw two things: the first echelon ahead of us and a nasty wall of rain headed straight towards us. The rain hit us before we caught the first echelon. When we caught the echelon, everyone was suffering from both working so damn hard and from the rain which at times felt like hail. So what was the logical thing to do?

Attack! Yes sirree I shot straight by everyone like a maniac and managed to drag Brian Hitchcock with me. I thought there would be a reaction and a new echelon would form, but instead we found ourselves with a 2 minute gap between both the echelon we caught and 2 additional wackos further up the road!! And this was with 40 miles to go just after I missed my feed since I could barely see anything let alone my mom handing me a water bottle.

Brian and I were holding our gap both ways, but were eventually joined by two strong riders as we echeloned east. We didn't make any dent into the two ahead of us, so it became clear that we were racing for 3rd. As we turned west, the vulture in me spotted weakness in Brian and one other guy, but that the 4th guy was very strong. So what did I do?

Attack! I just started riding hard off the front and after a bit of bucking around, the strong guy dropped the other two and bridged up to me. I wanted third so I did my best to seem like I could keep up on the remaining hills. With 1k to go we got into cat and mouse mode. He made me go first and teased me with a small gap that I bought into too early just before 200m. We were among the few finishers that day that came in as a group. Love it!

I ended up at 8th in omnium points and was the first non-Canadian.

Banana Belt 2

Well, after the 100 mile crosswind race, this whole 77 mile Banana Belt seemed like a walk in the park for me.  Leading up to the race though, there was some tension within the team.  In Banana Belt 1 my team didn't do the best despite having a 7 person team in a 24 person race.  We all met for beers and general team discussion the Thursday beforehand and there was a lot of finger pointing and grandiloquence of what should be done.  I kinda just sat there and ate chicken wings.  Sherm asked me what I thought and I said that "bike racing leadership shouldn't be appointed, but is demonstrated in the race."

Anyways, I got a ride out there with one of our "I'm just getting back into racing after 4 years of living another life" teammates.  The race was fairly typical Banana Belt stuff I guess with all the rollers providing lots of opportunity to attack and stuff.  Dwayne Farr looked quite strong that day, but it was Kyle Medlin that went for a solo effort on lap 3 or 4 that lasted a good 1.5 laps.  After this, Mike Kath and Erik Hofland always seemed to be getting themselves in these teaser breaks that were just a little bit up ahead.  I started getting a little aggressive on lap 5 or 6 where one of my attacks involved going right before the dam hill.  Our team was doing great at making sure they followed the strong wheels with Jeremy especially being an absolute nuisance to Bedford.

Just before the final lap, Bedford and Bourcier were trying attacks and I covered some of those.  Then, I sensed the field was a little tired, so I put in a good attack.  Nobody followed.  The peleton didn't react immediately.  And just like that I had a 40 second gap.  It was a ways to go, but I was feeling great.  I tempoed well up the dam hill and still had a good gap after that, so this was serious.  My moto-official was encouraging me and leading up to the finish it seemed like the peleton was closing in, so I put in some good digs up the final hills.  I looked back before the sprint hill and the gap was still big.  I powered up the last hill in a big gear and poster finished.  Our team led out Sherm who ended up in 4th.  That was a pretty great day for the team.  Oh and guess this race made Jeremy my favorite newest addition to the OBRA 1/2 peleton.

Anniversary Weekend

After BB2, I met my girlfriend and headed out to the coast for a romantic 1-year anniversary where I proposed to her on Sunday.  And she was quite surprised but said yes and we're both quite excited.