Sunday, August 10, 2008

If you can't do it well, at least be colorful.

That pretty much sums up my WV Stage race experience. The TT was longer than I'm really up for doing anymore. I can do longer efforts in road races, but my ability to just sit on the bike and go like hell by myself hasn't been there for a few years. I started out riding like a hero at around 28mph, but after 11 miles, I hit a spot where it just wasn't happening for me. In short, I blew to pieces and there was still the 2 big hills on the course to go. I'd started behind Betsy Shogren and passed her within 3 miles, but in the last 2/10s of a mile of the big climb, she rolled up past me and said 'BOOOO'. I stayed with her and rolled down past her after the descent then locked up completely on a small rise just near the finish. She passed me again. I used gravity to go back past her at the finish, but I knew my time was slow. I was expecting a 58 minute time on the course, but with as bad as I blew up, I wound up with a 1:02. The crit later in the day was disappointing as well. Since they were letting people ride individual stages, one of my teammates came down to help out me in my race and then our 123 GC rider Adam in his. Unfortunately, he was trying to run our race strategy off of how he felt, discounting the fact that I'd already done a difficult stage earlier in the day. In the end, I cracked due to his efforts when he thought we had to take a bunch of time in the crit. I wanted to just take the time bonuses and a bit more time in the last lap which would've put me close enough to do the same thing the following day in the road race. I knew I could win the sprints easy enough, but I did not want to have to deal with the extra efforts. After that debacle, I had to accept the fact that I was racing for second. I also had to accept the fact that I was probably going to finish second in the series as well due to the fact that we'd let a rider who slipped into contention in the series due to the fact that everyone else thought he had done another category in the first race and had been scored that way as well. That's for later though. I stayed with the guys I figured I had to stay with and after they tried to crack me on the climbs, it was going to come to the finishing sprint. Everything came together perfectly. Eric Delaney gave his teammate a long leadout to the final quarter mile and then Fritz tried to jump hard to get rid of me. Sorry, nothing doing there. If I can get to the sprint, you're not going to drop me like that. Then disaster struck. Course marshalling at the WV races has been sketchy before, but this time, we were sprinting into cars. As we came around the final bend, I found myself heading straight into a Dodge Neon with a Jeep directly ahead of me going in the same direction we were going. WHOA, not good. I quickly saw the only way out of this situation was swing wide left. In doing so, the bike started kicking out from under me. I compensated and the bike wound up swinging completely in the other direction and was now going sideways. Then finally after the extreme lateral stress, the tire, after already getting torn down to the casing, came off the rim. I skidded to a halt. I tried to slip the tire back on, then quickly realized I was going to have to run for it. Yanking my shoes off and picking the bike up, I did the final 200 yards with my hamstrings screaming in pain. I only lost a couple places and I didn't get hurt, but I was pissed. I snapped a bit at one of the people who were supposed to be marshalling (unofficially though) after she asked me if I was ok. 'NOOOOO', I'd shouted and proceeded to start running. At the line, I completely collapsed. Before long, everyone who was there had heard about the spectacular 'near crash' and that everyone was amazed I wasn't a hood ornament and had also managed to keep the bike upright. It was a Kodak moment, but not a good one. Due to the points fiasco from the night before, it threw me back in the standings of the series. I'm still leading but since it is based off of the top 5 finishes, I now have to win the Mountain State Classic outright. There are 2 5 mile climbs which gain a couple thousand feet so it's definitely not my race. I've done well there before but with the race now being called the 'Jay Downs Beatdown' by several of the other masters riders, I'm going to have my hands full.

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