End of the road season. (Thank God!)

Well, the end of the road season is winding down. It has been a disappointing one at that. I started the year out really well, unfortunately, I did not do my traditional weight workouts thru early April. So I started out slow and little by little, I died out completely! I do have a couple more events with one that I'm particularly interested in doing well in. The Long Street Tour in Columbus, OH on my birthday, September 5th. That would be a heck of a present to myself, but I'd also take a win from anyone on the team. In this race a few years back, I was just coming out of an injury plagued season after a very nasty crash early in the season. I'd had a couple good races but no sprint. So I was the guy who monitored the front or chased the whole race for out team. Of the 22.25 miles out of 25 that I was in the race, I was on the front for well over 10 miles. If an attack went and one of our team members was not in the it, I'd go to the front and raise the pace 1 or 2 mph. Then motor til the gap came down and a counter could go. From there, I would park myself in third place and just be a total jerk to everyone trying to organize a chase. It took a lot of effort and just when I was thinking we were going to pull off the race as we wanted, I popped. Right after that, the final attack went and the 2 other riders on my team didn't respond. I hated putting that kind of effort out to have it wasted like that but hey, that's baseball. I'll probably be in the same kind of role here, but I will be looking for the opportunist moves. I was able to cross a huge gap at the westlake crit a few weeks ago and I'm pretty sure I can handle repeated moves like that especially as there is a lot of cornering in this race. To prep for it, I will finally be getting down to the track in Pittsburgh for the fixed gear races on next Friday. I've been trying to work that into my schedule all year. Up til 2 of the individual events last year when I was competing on a gear that was too small for the track size we are on, I'd not lost there since I started going down once or twice a year starting in 2003. I did finally get a 15 tooth cog and set matters right in the final two events, a miss and out and then a 10 lap scratch race. This year, I hope to get down there and kick everyone around and now that I know what gearing to use, I'll be there from the gun and going for it. I find that the intensity of track racing really gets the legs going for a crit as long as it isn't the next day. It also works for cross which starts up in a few weeks. I'll be tag teaming my first couple cross races with the finals of the WVMBA MTB Short Track series. The last time I was at one of those, I won handily. Everyone else showed up for a MTB Short Track race and I showed up for a Cross race. Even on the old steel Fort, the race was decided in about 200 yards. The next 20 minutes were a formality. I hope the others work the same way. We'll see in a few weeks!