Author: kennettron

I thought I’d bring a camera along for my ride today and take a bunch of blurry pictures of the road.  Here they are:

Here’s the Flat Irons.  It was really hot today.  Mid 90’s down low so I headed for the mountains where it was like 20 degrees cooler.  I drank one and a half bottles 11 minutes into my ride and had to stop at a Starbucks and fill em up in the bathroom.  11 minutes into the ride!!

First pitch up Flagstaff out of Boulder.

Still steep at the top.

Heading deep into the mountains now on the backside.

A lake.

Onto the gravel road now for a long time.  This is one of the places I keep an especially sharp eye out for mountain lions.  All I want is to get one punch in before it sinks its teeth into my scull.  Just one punch is all.

Finally out of the gravel, where I flatted.  Now I’m heading into the town of Coal Creek.  I spent a good amount of time lost up in the hills above the town looking for the road I’d planned on taking.

Chocolate wasn’t the best choice of flavors on a hot day like today.  Now I need new bar tape.

Yeah…

I stopped for a liter of ginger ale to wash down all the chocolate.

Rush hour traffic in Coral Creek.

Aspens er where up in her.

The most shade all day long heading out of Coal up to Golden Gate Canyon state park.

High altitude horses with hematocrits of 70 and v02s of 220.

Next gravel section.  I had no clue where I was.

Off the gravel and onto Peak to Peak highway.

I went downhill on Boulder Canyon when I got to Nederland, then up Magnolia.  I took pictures going up but they’re all pretty blurry.  Here’s one anyways:

It starts out REALLY steep and stays REALLY steep until the top, about infinity miles later.

At the top.  5 liters of fluid consumed by now, one and a half being stolen tap water from a gas station where the guy wanted me to pay 25 cents per water bottle.  For tap water!  I told him to…have a nice day.

Back on Boulder Canyon heading for home.  This is a tunnel.

A nice cold bowl of frozen yogurt and berries waiting for me at home after another 13K feet of climbing.

I’ve always thought that if I were a terrorist, I’d go around from state to state, country to country, purposefully starting forest fires.  I don’t know whether this is a practiced art of terrorism, but it sure seems like a great way to cause a lot of destruction without very much chance of being caught.  There’s a big forest fire brewing just north of Boulder right now, in the hills above Fort Colins.  You can see the smoke if you look north, and even the mountains to the West are trapped in a haze of smoke.  If you didn’t know any better, you’d assume it’s just dust or air pollution from traffic.  I’m not sure what the cause of the fire was or why it’s so badly out of control, but that won’t stop me from a few heavily biased assumptions that help further my already deep-seated convictions about life.  The authorities say it’s from a lightning strike.  My bet is a cigarette butt, because I don’t like cigarettes.  The authorities don’t mention anything about pine beetle kill in regards to the fire (this is in reference to the infestation of pine beetles , which, due to climate change, have become a huge cause of die-out amongst pine forests, leaving dead dry wood that may or may not add extra propellent to forest fires).  I, for one, do believe that the forest is burning more rapidly because of the pine beetles.  I believe this because I don’t like my or our civilization’s greed when it comes to consuming resources and our negative impact on the earth.  Anything to strengthen my beliefs.  If the answer you’re looking for isn’t there, look harder damn it and you’ll find it.

One of the key flaws in humans is our inability to learn new things, and our overpowering yearning to re-learn what we already know keeps us in a perpetual loop of ignorance.  We like to listen to the same old songs, watch the same movies over and over, and read books that we’ve read three times before.  But more than that, we like to re-learn things that don’t necessarily need to be re-learned.  If you know that you know a certain thing, but can’t give a good enough explanation about it at a dinner party, do you find yourself going home and researching it, with exclamations of, “ah, now THAT’S right.  I knew that.  I just forgot that one little detail in the krebs cycle and that’s why I sounded so uninformed.  Dag nab it!”  I find myself constantly re-learning things I knew years ago and either forgot entirely, or just forgot a little bit.  How many times have I been to Wikipedia’s page on the central nervous system or the amino acid L-glutamine?  One might ask the same question in regards to the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.  The world may never know.

When I hear a certain subject come up that I know something about, I blurt out the same thing I always say about that subject, almost as if I’m the only one who knows that thing and have to inform everyone about how and why it’s so.  If I know nothing of the subject, I absorb little of what is being told to me.  Instead, I wait for my opportunity to attack, just like in a bike race.  A slight pause, a questionable fact in the other person’s argument, or even the hint of hesitation as they say something, and I, knowing nothing of the subject mind you, go for the jugular.  Of course this isn’t always the case, and may be an exaggeration, but there’s some truth to it.  Is it my unwillingness to learn something new or is it my innate desire to disagree?  There’s something to be said for critics.  And that something is: fuck off!  Haha, no but seriously, questioning an authority, even when it comes to the true cause of a forest fire, is always worthy.  Especially when the root of the problem isn’t being addressed or if it has anything to do with someone’s profit, which almost everything does.

As creatures of habit, our foresight is small and our yearning for adventure is petite, as a society anyways.  The individual may be another matter.  But as a mass, we don’t look to the past as a guide for our future, because the past is in the past and the distant future isn’t relevant to what’s on TV tonight, which is re-runs of The Office of course.  What am I getting at, you ask?  Well I don’t know yet, because I just started typing whatever came to me that instant and haven’t really thought about what’s going to come next.  Maybe a period.

It’s not our fault though.  When something new is learned, a neural pathway is built that will never be destroyed (for the time being anyways).  As we forget things, the pathway to that memory is weakened but still exists, making it easier to re-learn in the future, as opposed to a truly new thing which is more difficult because it requires the construction of a new neural pathway.  Damn it, even right now I’m writing about something that I already know.  Or think that I know.  I guess if everyone knows a lot about a little, and we can successfully transfer the information to one another, continuous learning is unnecessary: just learn something and hopefully someone else doesn’t know it so you have some use  in the world.  Now that I think about it, maybe this is what already takes place.  But our ability to communicate, and our ability to listen to what someone else is saying, is so poor that this system doesn’t seem to work.  After all, ignorance and a lack of successful communication are the cause of the majority of our dilemmas.  Maybe there’s just too many people in the world.  It seems like that’s the conclusion I come to no matter what the problem.

I assume most people think they’re unique, based on what I believe about myself.  Either the way people think or how they feel, most humans believe themselves to be different, adrift in a life raft that only they know how to row, living in their own worlds.  Each person living in their own world, separated by nothing but separated nonetheless, unknowing that everyone else does, in fact, think and feel pretty much the same as they do.  I realized this years ago–that what I experience is the same as everyone else–and since then have based what I think about the world and what I believe about the human psyche, solely on what I myself think and feel.  So if everyone believes themselves to be unique, realizing that I’m not unique means that I actually am.  Congratulations, Kennett.

Recently, I edited a paper of my brother’s.  The subject was on education: Nietzscheism  vs Nationalism, sort of.  The idea of educating people to be unique thinkers, question things, and to be individuals as opposed to a mass, was a major goal of Nietzsche.  The end product is to become an Übermensch, a person who lives with their own set of rules, hopefully a set of rules “higher” than that set by society.  An Übermensch is a person who inspires and leads, though if everyone was an Übermensch I don’t see what the point of having a leader or an inspiration figure would be, since both of those things wouldn’t be neccesary anymore.  All of the Übermensch’s questionable traits of eugenics, sexism, and racism aside, an Übermensch is an enlightened person that realizes that the boundaries of society or traditional morality should be broken because they’re based solely on a particular country’s economic desire.  Nationalism, or being a part of a society that demands the good of the many over the good of the individual, requires a different kind of education: one that keeps the flock tightly grouped to be ready for shearing.  I’m not sure if this is what my brother’s paper is actually about, or if this is really what Nietzsche’s idea of an Übermensch actually is, but it’s what I’ve chosen to believe.  And in believing that and discarding everything Wikipedia told me about an Übermensch and going off in my own direction, I have, in doing so, become an Übermensch.

Instead of becoming an Übermensch pyromaniac bent on destroying forests who’s unwilling and unable to learn new things but has decided that it doesn’t matter anyways because society sucks, morality is a joke to get us working for the rich, and we’re all going to die after pointless lives full of constant bickering over miscommunications and stumbling upon our own ignorance, instead of becoming that PyroÜbermensch, I’ll continue on with being a hungry CycloÜbermensch.  That way I can be satisfied with a good long ride and enjoy a can of sardines afterwards as I reap the benefit of all that b-12 and omega-3.  Excuse me while I look those two things up again to find out what they’re good for.

So many things have happened in the past three weeks since my last post that I don’t have time to do a good job writing about them.  So many things, in fact, that I cannot even remember most of them.  My brain has space for approximately one week of new information before it starts to forget the old.  It forgets things on either end of my life, either things that happened years ago in the beginning, or it starts a chemical peel of the most recent stuff.  If I don’t get it out in a blog post soon enough, it’s gone forever.  So I’ll make an attempt to re-remember the events from the past three weeks since my Dan Harm weekend.  Here we go: I slept for roughly 3/7ths of the time.  During the other 4/7ths I ate a few large burritos, I ran over three already dead snakes on the road, I finished my tube of toothpaste, I finished a miniature tube of toothpaste, I brushed my teeth for a few days without any toothpaste (dag nab it!), which is not very satisfying, my dog Thomas ate a miniature tube of toothpaste that I found in a box at home and so I was forced to continue brushing my teeth with nothing but water, and then finally I found one more miniature tube of toothpaste this morning so now I have toothpaste again and I’m looking forward to brushing my teeth with full satisfaction tonight.

Okay, maybe a random list format isn’t the best way to go about all my adventures of the past month.  I’ll try the conventional way instead and list them in order with explanation.

May 18-20th Superior Morgul Omnium.  The weekend after my Dan Harm weekend hiking up in the mountains was the weekend of my first race back since Gila.  The Superior Morgul Omnium, where I ended up 10th overall, was a nasty reminder of how bike racing hurts.  After a long time away from the pain, I needed something drastic to kick me back into the routine of suffering.  The time trial was on Friday, before work luckily, otherwise I would have had to miss work.  I rode to the course, getting on my time trial bike for the second time since Cascade Classic of last year.  The course was 10K long  with two big rollers, one of which was pretty steep.  There was a downhill roundabout filled with rush-hour traffic and dump trucks that were piled up a hundred meters leading into the roundabout.  I, like everyone else, almost ran into the back of a car(s) in my attempt to not slow down at all.  If this didn’t get my heart rate up, the panic just minutes before the start certainly already had.  I flatted six minutes before my start.  Fortunately I hadn’t been able to find any fast aero or tubbie wheels to borrow, so I was on my clincher training wheels which made fixing the flat possible (notice how I slipped in the fact that I was on training wheels and therefor had a good excuse for riding slow? A slight slip of the tongue is always the best way to mention excuses.  Avoid the obvious).  Anyways, after the panic at the start and the hair-raising roundabout, I bolted up the steepest of the hills and suffered decently hard for the next 10 minutes or so until I suddenly found myself 150 meters away from the finish line, so I sprinted.   I  came in mid pack (and second place in the women’s cat 1/2!)  After the race I rode with my roommate Kim to the house she was dog sitting at, just a few miles away.  There, I ate a large sandwich or two and played with the dog.  The dog, named Casey, soon developed a huge crush on me and began air humping frantically in my direction every time she came over to me.  I disgustedly left for work.

The next day was less warm and sunny, and in fact it threatened to rain during the crit.  I rode out there for a warm up and we raced hard.  I followed a few moves in the first half of the race while the peloton split up, soon becoming just a group of 30 or so.  The pace was hard and there was a slight hill and a fast downhill turn that always required sprinting out of.  My legs were slowly awakening this weekend, but weren’t quite awake enough at this point to really hammer hard.  I ended up 11th but made up for my lack of glory by ransacking the vendor’s tents and scoring a free post-race massage and plenty of FRS to keep my quercitin stores fully stocked for the rest of the month.

Sunday: six laps, 80 miles, and seven times up “The Wall,” which is the famous two minute climb featured in the movie American Flyers that takes the racers in the movie approximately 10 minutes to climb.  I went into this stage with my highest hopes of a win for the weekend.  The steep finish climb on The Wall was well suited to my liking and the rest of the course was hard, with wind and plenty of small rollers to smash the legs real good.  I held my horses for the first lap, letting all the pointless attackers tire themselves out.  I followed a hard attack on the second time up the wall but didn’t have enough in my lungs to make it stick over the windy, false flat section at the top of the course and our four man move was caught.  Soon after that a large group of guys sort of just rolled away without any big effort.  They increased their gap on us over the next couple laps and I thought they were gone for good, taking up the top 11 places.  My legs were feeling more and more drained with every lap.  Basically after lap number two I was donesky.  Whatever.  I told myself to keep going on no matter what since I needed this race to open back up and prepare for the next hard block of training.

I think it was the fourth time up the wall that things blew apart once and for all.  I noticed a large gap open to seven riders up front as we got to the steepest section of the climb.  I gave it everything to move myself up to the front of the pack and then gave it everything once more to close the gap to the guys off the front.  I barely got on over the top.  Then it was false flat and crosswind.  I was hurtin’ somethin’ good now !  We were away, eight of us, and there was some good fire power in our group too.  I held on near the back and made myself as small as I possibly could, trying to recover before the next climb.  I did not.  I came off immediately once we hit the base of the next climb.  My legs were dead and I had nothing more to give.

The remainder of the peloton caught me a few minutes later and dropped me temporarily before I sacked it up and forced my way back on.  I spent the next lap wallowing in self pity, wondering why I couldn’t stick with the move that eventually caught the breakaway and won.  And then I decided not to be a little bitch.  I got angry at my legs and decided to punish myself, so I began attacking and finally got away by myself with a little over a lap to go.  I held the rest of the pack off and came in by myself in 14th, still in the money which was my main motivator for those last 45 minutes.  And then I went to work at the Ethiopian restaurant, late, completely out of it, dehydrated, and extremely tired.  Like usual.

May 21st-27th.  Training and de-icing iced water.  The next week was just a lot of hard riding and hours at Ras Kassas.  The day after the Superior Morgul RR, Scott Tietzel (Juwi Solar) and I went on a big climbing day adventure.  It was close to 90 degrees down in Boulder, which meant that it would be nice and warm up in the mountains as well.  For the Boulderites reading this, here’s where we went: up Flagstaff to the gravel road that goes to highway 72, the gravel road that cuts to Magnolia, back on to Peak to Peak, a bakery break in Nederland for a panini and a pastry, on to Ward, down Left Hand Canyon, up Lee Hill where Scott once saw a mountain lion as long as the yellow line to the white line (of a road), then up on a bunch of gravel trails in the Linden neighborhood, down to town, up Sunshine to Poor Man’s, down Boulder Canyon to the bike path.  Done.  It was about 5.5 hours, something over 90 miles and close to 11,000 ft of climbing.  I had such a good time that I decided to do it again the next day.

Next day: damn I was tired.  But it was so hot and sunny out that I HAD to do a big ride and got in 4.5 hours of mountains.  The next few days I spent some time on the TT bike and a lot of stressful nights at work (on Saturday night I made $173 in tips!!–super busy for Ras Kassas).  By Saturday I was sufficiently rested to attempt a Shaky Ride.  It stared out well enough, but by the time I began the threshold interval three hours in, I was cracked from the heat.  I finished off the 40′ threshold climb with another 40′ climb.  I sufficiently enjoyed the suffering and the heat.  I was feeling great being back on the bike after that long rest period post Gila.  After the ride I went to Ras Kassas and began serving people their food on Shaky legs.  I have one major pet peeve when it comes to serving customers.  I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but when someone doesn’t want ice in their water and I’ve just brought them water with ice and they have the nerve to ask me to get a new glass of water for them with no ice, well, that just doesn’t sit well with me.  I usually end up just setting their glass of ice water at the bar until the ice melts, and then I bring it to them 15 minutes later.  Okay, usually I don’t do this because I realize how irrational I’m being.  Usually I drink their water (so it doesn’t go to waste) and fill a new glass without ice, just  like a good waiter.  But sometimes I’m not in the mood.  Tonight was one of those nights.  Having just burned 5,500 calories on my ride in 90 degree heat, it’s a miracle they got any dang water from me at all.

May 28th.  The Boulder-Boulder 10K run is a pretty big event every year in Boulder.  There are thousands of amateur runners and walkers that participate in the fun run in the morning.  Then, mid-day, the pros start.  The start line is right in front of Ras Kassas, and the restaurant has a tradition of having a huge buffet and party for everyone that wants to come after the race, with proceeds going to a foundation in Ethiopia that builds schools and provides clean drinking water.  We cheered the runners as they started, then went back into the restaurant to continue getting things set up for the party.  A few hours later the place was packed.  One of my jobs was using taking people’s money at the door and counting the number of people who came in.  I got to use one of those little clicker things that counts when you click it, and before some little kids got hold of it, I’d clicked it 186 times.  It later said 1,100.  Those were some bored kids I think.

There was plenty of Ethiopian dancing and the place erupted with applause and singing when the African runners finally showed up.  Apparently a few years before when the Ethiopian runners came, they ate and drank so much they couldn’t walk out the front door.  This time wasn’t that drastic, but everyone left satisfied.  Almost all the food was eaten and we completely ran out of St. George (the more popular of the two Ethiopian Lagers).

May 29th-June 2nd.  This week marked the biggest week of training I’ve done all year.  Not in terms of hours, but in terms of overall stress.  Wise guru coach Sam Johnson was planning a peak for the upcoming races I was attending: the Mt. Hood Classic, Nature Valley Grand Prix, and Elite Nationals.  Three weeks of racing that I was going to CRUSH!  Tuesday: intervals.  Both vo2 AND sprints.  Wednesday: more intervals including threshold.  Thursday was a rest day.  Friday: vo2 and sprints.  Saturday: BIG climbing.  Sunday: HUGE climbing.  (I sort of cheated over the weekend and did more than what Sam wanted me to do and ended up getting sick).

Anyways, I slayed myself on both Tuesday and Wednesday’s intervals and just shredded my lungs.  I was wheezing and coughing for the next two days in a row.  On Wednesday night at like 3AM I picked up a friend from the bus stop/a random parking lot where his shuttle dropped him off.  He’d just come from the airport, or more accurately, New Zealand.  I met Geoff last summer in Belgium and he’s here in Boulder for a half year of triathlon training.  Just up and quit his job and moved to Boulder to live the dream.  Boulder attracts endurance athletes like slug bait attracts slugs.  Wait, I can think of a better simili than that.  It attracts endurance athletes like fish bait attracts fish.  Damn it.  That’s not very original either.

The next day, Thursday, I rode my bike over to an office building and ate a BUNCH of sandwiches!  I was there, not just to eat sandwiches, but to also participate in a paid study group that was surveying local Boulder endurance athletes on a top secret product that I cannot talk to you about because I signed a waiver thing that said if I talk about it to anyone I get my thumbs chopped off and stapled to my forehead like miniature devil horns.  All I can say is that I ate a bunch of sandwiches, approximately 500% more than anyone else there, and thoroughly upset the test group’s median.  You know those toothpaste commercials that say nine out of 10 dentists prefer Colgate to other leading brands?  I was that one other dentist.  Except none of us really liked the product the company was pushing.  The sandwiches though…yeah.  Pretty damn good.  I think I’m allowed to talk about those.  I had nine I believe.  All were on artisan breads and cut into small pieces.  1) apple/cheese, 2)ham/turkey/sprouts/mayo/cheese,  3) grilled onions/beef/tomato/lettuce, 4) cheese/veggies, 5) salami/pepperoni/ cheese/lettuce, 6) egg salad, 7) chicken salad.  Two were repeats.  My favorite was the one with the grilled onions and beef, followed closely by the chicken salad sandwich because it was DRENCHED in mayonnaise.  Just sloppy and wet from mayo.  I know  you think mayo is gross and you tell everyone that you don’t like it because it’s so gross and fatty, but secretly, deep down you KNOW you love that shit.  I rode home satisfied with sandwiches and a nice full wallet from the pay off from the survey says group, and found my longtime friend Spencer Smitheman sitting in my living room.

Spencer drove down from Alberta Canada for the weekend to visit.  Geoff came over to join for dinner and the three of us and Kim made a pizza that night.  I’ve been making pizzas for the past couple weeks with my mom’s secret crust recipe.  The key to a good pizza is the crust, and I’ve got it down now.  I think we made a chicken pizza with feta, onion, bell pepper, and spinach.  A few days earlier I made a Mexican pizza with beans, chicken, salsa, cheese, olives, onions, jalapenos, and tomatoes and lettuce as garnish.

The next day was a long one.  Spencer and I went out in the heat for a three hour ride, during which I crushed some vo2 intervals and 10×30 second sprints.  I was pretty wrecked after the ride, but there wasn’t much time for rest.  Spencer and I quickly ate some frozen yogurt Kim brought home for us, then rode off to my painting job.  I’d spent approximately 13 hours over the span of nine trips to Home Depot gathering the few essentials I needed to paint the small garage and dropped it all off at the house a few days before.  We rode up to north Boulder in a strong head wind, the sun beating down, drenched in sweat once again.  I’d never painted drywall before, and didn’t realize how much sanding is required.  Soon we were drenched in sweat and covered in itchy paint from the sanding of the drywall.  We had to close the garage door in order to sand the section that the garage door covered on the ceiling.  The temperature reached 100 degrees or so and the white paint dust seeped into every pore, our eyes, our noses, our ears, and worked their way through our masks into our mouthes and lungs.  We opened the garage door and went out for air, sucking in the relatively cool and fresh air outside in big gulps.  Next up was priming, which wasn’t nearly as difficult.  We painted until we ran out of paint, then made a mad dash on our bikes back home to meet friends for White Russians and a night out on the town, my first night out since New Year’s Eve.

The next day I did a big ride.  5.5 hours with 13,000 feet of climbing.  I came home and ate nachos and fajita burritos with Spencer and Kim.  This put my 2012 burrito count to 53 I believe.  Spencer took off that night for his long drive back to civilization (Canada).

Sunday: my last day of training before rest.  Today was a day of days.  A ride of rides.  A man’s man’s ride.  A day I’d been looking forward to for a week.  Geoff, Kim, and I drove to Golden, the city just south of Boulder.  We parked in a Safeway parking lot (a “car park” for you UK readers) and I began my long journey to the top of Mt. Evans while Kim and Geoff did their own rides and runs (triathletes like to run after their rides for some reason.  Sounds painful to me).  On my ride, I saw six foxes, four deer, an elk, and some long boarders who almost crashed into a car behind me.  I reached the summit of Mt. Evans at 14,130 feet elevation some five hours later, having climbed 26,500 feet in the past two days alone.  I was wrecked!  The last 14.5 miles of the ride go up Mt. Evans itself, starting at the base near 10K feet where it’s still warm and green with trees.  Pretty suddenly, near 12K feet, it turns to cliffs, rock, and snow with marmots as your only friends in sight, chattering in earnest for your success to the top…or for you to throw them a peanut.  The road is single lane, full of bumps and potholes without a guardrail to keep you from veering of the 500-foot cliff to the left.  The last couple miles are all super tight switch back.  The wind picked up and I began getting cold despite the hard effort I was putting out.  Wait, maybe I wasn’t putting out a hard effort any more.  My power meter read low zone 2.  I hammered and got it back to zone 3.  Not for long.  My legs were depleted and rubbery.  I got to the top, slightly dizzy and fully gassed.  It was snowing lightly and cold.  A few people in cars in the car  park at the top offered congratulations and a seat in their car to warm up.  I declined, stupidly.  This is probably where the cold viruses within me came out of hibernation and made their move.  Geoff and Kim met me with the car 20 minutes later and we drove a long, long way home to more nachos and a half bag of Cheerios that weren’t mine.  I didn’t get to bed until 1:30.

Spencer in a daze from so much good food.  Nachos: chips, cheese, garlic, (LOTS of garlic), chicken, chili verde salsa, pico de gallo.  Fajitas: mix of bell peppers, onion, chicken, beans, avacado.

Geoff and I before the Mt. Evans ride.

Kim and I in a Safeway parking lot.  Classic.  I made a huge nasty poop in the toilet inside right before two little kids went in to use it.  Stinking up a public restroom with undigested fajitas from the night before: classic.

Top of Evans.

While Kim and Geoff hiked up to the very tip top of Evans, I sat in the car and tried to warm up with this food I’d brought from home.  Wanting to raise my burrito count by one, I pounded this cup of spinach and onions with this tortilla and had an extremely sick stomach down the steep road for the next hour and a half.  One full bunch of spinach cooks down pretty small, but it’s still too big for a stomach with post ride trauma at altitude.

The shadow of Mt. Evans on the drive down.  (Note: the mountain is behind us, which is why the shadow is in front of us–because the sun is behind the mountain).

It was a long drive down the mountain and to home.

I finished up painting the garage on Monday, then flew to Portland Oregon on Tuesday, already getting sick.  I missed Mt. Hood this weekend because of it.  My spot on the composite team for Nature Valley was also a dud and I’m no longer doing that, so all the money I spent on the plane ticket there is for nothing.  To the Wisconsin team manager that’s responsible for making that happening: I hope you get sick.

Well, it’s been a long time since I posted and I apologize for that.  As you can see, I was just real busy!  Time to rest up and get over this cold so I can put all this damn training to use in a race!

For those of you who don’t know Dan Harm, he’s a bike racer who also does other things. Like hiking, building trails in the mountains, chopping wood, bike touring, weight training?, etc. I decided to do other things a few days ago too: a one-night back pack trip with my roommate, Kim. I rode up to Estes Park in the mountains, we hiked, then the next day I rode home. This wasn’t a true Dan Harm adventure though, because the ride there was only 3.5 hours and our total hiking distance was only 13 or 14 miles, but it’s mid race season and my wise guru coach Sim Jinson wouldn’t want me doing anything too extreme.

I can’t be bothered to flip this right side up. This is the dirt section at the top of Magnolia, a nice hard climb out of Boulder.

Peak to Peak highway.

Just your basic bullshit church-castle on the side of the road up at 9,000 ft or so.

Basic bullshit 14,000 ft mountain scenery.

Combination Taco Bell and KFC. It was only a 65 mile ride but had over 9k feet of climbing. And everyone knows that the elevation gain to burrito ratio is three to one. At least.

Back when I was a kid bean burritos were like 69 cents. Now they’re a buck o’ five! The same price as Freedom! Thanks for nothing Iraq war, now our burritos are freaking expensive AND the rest of the world hates us even more.

This Taco bell has certainly had some upset customers too. Before the ride I googled it to find out where it was. My only complaint was that they had the hot sauce behind the counter and you had to ask for it, and I had to ask three time for the guy working there to give me enough fire sauce. But here’s the google reviews. Not pretty!

I took a nap in a park while I waited for Kim to arrive.

$20 parking fee and $15 overnight permit?? No thanks. Jeeze we Kim already paid $8 for a map!! How about we and find a spot way in the woods to camp where no ranger will venture, park in a gravel pull out, and walk on the road to the trail head. And lucky us, some guy ended up giving us a lift in the back of his truck for the last 0.01 miles.

The trail we took had lots of trees on it. I think they fell the night before.

And lots of snow.

But no people!

After walking around for one hour trying to find a spot that was level and didn’t have any snow, we found our camp site near a lake. And then it got cold. And then I got hungry. And then I cursed Kim for forgetting the damn cracker trail mix!

I told Kim we shouldn’t have a fire because it’s illegal and illegal things are bad to do and I always obey the law, but she wouldn’t listen to me and started one anyways. And burnt her mittens.

The lake the next morning. It was too cold to go swimming.

We took a longer way back to the car and things turned sepia for a moment.

And then things turned REALLY old timey sepia.

And then we jumped in an extremely cold river and laid on a rock for like three days, which we both decided was not nearly long enough and within a few more hours I was on my bike and Kim was driving to work. My legs felt like shit.

Kim’s drive home

I decided to make some jokes about raccoons because I like raccoons and they’re funny animals.  So I sat down and wrote a blog post about them, putting a lot of thought into each joke and explaining why some of the more complicated jokes are funny, just in case you don’t get them.  Here they are:

Q: Why did the raccoon cross the street?
A: To get to Fred Meyers to buy some dish detergent.  (Because raccoons like to wash their food. Although, it’s actually a myth that they’re washing it; they’re really just softening it to make it easier to eat).

Q: Why did the raccoon buy Sensodyne toothpaste?
A: Because apparently raccoons have really sensitive teeth.

Q: What’s a raccoon’s favorite color?
A: Raccoons are colorblind.

Q: How big does an average adult raccoon weigh?
A: 8-20 pounds

A raccoon walks into a bar.  Bar tender says, “Don’t shoot I’ll give you the money!”  (This is funny because raccoons have bandit masks across their eyes, which make them look like robbers. And the bar tender thought the raccoon was going to rob him. But really the raccoon just wanted to order a drink).

One time I fed a raccoon a bunch of hot dogs.  

Q: How many limbs does a raccoon have?
A: Between zero and four. But usually four.

Q: Why did the raccoon remember the Alamos?
A: Because Davy Crocket had a coon skin hat.

Raccoons are omnivores and subside on both meat, plant-based food, and redundancy.

Q: Why don’t raccoons brush their teeth?
A: Because it would look like they had rabies. (This is funny because people often associate rabies with raccoons, possibly because both words start with the letter R).

Q: How many rabid raccoons does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Two.  One to screw in the light bulb and one to *also screw in the light bulb.*

*edited for content

And there you have it: what I did this morning instead of going on a bike ride. Now it’s mid afternoon.

Here’s a picture of a raccoon so you have something to look at while you laugh at all my great raccoon jokes.

I’m too drained to write an original post about Gila for my blog, so I’m just using the race report email I sent out to our team.  It’s been an extremely long two weeks since I left for Arkansas.  Jon, Gabe, and myself did 9 days of racing in an 11 day span, with a lot of travel before, during, and after.  I’m not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.  I also have to find some way to make enough money to go to Europe after Cascade in late July, which I have to do in the next month before the next barrage of racing comes along, starting in June.  I’m thinking of painting a house or two.

In terms of how the races went for me as a whole, I’m pretty happy about both Joe Martin and Gila.  I’m placing in the top 30 now on stages, which is an improvement on years past, and as long as the race doesn’t end with a 30 minute climb, I feel like I’m in the mix for a real result.  I just need some more confidence in cornering, positioning, and following the right wheels in the finale, and I’m confident that I’ll be placing in the top 10 by the end of the season.  Here’s the report on Gila.  Hopefully Winger will give me some pictures to use when he gets the chance.

The final three stages of Gila included a time trial, a crit, and a road race.  The team’s goal heading into these final three stages was to win all three stages, obviously.  Failing that, our second goal was to race aggressively while preserving Jon’s GC position and hopefully get a top 10 in the crit.  The time trial on Friday was a big ring type of course (as in 55 or 56 chain rings), with two semi large climbs and some nasty little rollers that made you question your desire to continue pedaling hard.  Wind is always somewhat of an issue on this course, though on race day it wasn’t too bad.  Jesse went off first, followed by Colin, Winger, Dan, Gabe, myself, and Jon.  Unfortunately I went off right when it got super windy.  Just moments before I went, my one-minute man (Gabe) was treated to a nice tail wind out AND back, whereas the wind was definitely head on for me the entire time.  And then right when I finished the wind died out completely.  Oh well.

Dan showed his time trialing prowess with the best result on our team placing 58th, followed by Gabe.  Jon lost a number of places on his GC position, though the final stage would offer the chance to right any wrongs dealt to him by the cruelty of the time trial bike.  The final day, the Gila Monster stage, would be 104 miles with 10,000 feet of climbing.  But we’ll get to that in due time.

Somehow the 36-40 minute effort of the time trial took it out of some of us more than expected and our crit riding ability the next day wasn’t quite what we’d hoped for.  Despite the tiredness some of us were feeling by the fourth day of the Gila, we prepared for the crit with fire still burning in our bellies (I had WAAAY too much yogurt and green chilies before the crit).  After an hour spin in the morning, followed by food, followed by more food, we finished off the afternoon’s preparations with an extended warm up before the downtown crit.  For some reason Colin had insisted on wearing his skinsuit, forcing the rest of us to wear our black kits.  It was 84 degrees.  I’d been planning on kitting up in my wife beater Defeet base layer and pinning the numbers directly onto that.  It was hot.  Damn you and your skin suit Colin!!!

Winger got things kicked off in style once the starting pistol went off.  He took the hole shot and got a lap off the front before the counter move took over.  Jesse was in the counter and helped drive the two-man move up the road for the next couple laps.  Not knowing that Jesse was up the road, I began my own bridge attempt and caught a guy that was in between Jesse’s move and the field, somewhere on lap four or five I believe.  My bridge mate wasn’t working very hard and we got caught by a Colombian national team guy on the short climb on the backside of the course.  He went by us and I flicked my elbow for my break mate to close the gap to him since I’d just pulled for over half a lap.  He ended up letting a huge gap open to the Colombian, which I eventually decided I’d have to close by myself.  But pretty soon it became apparent that it was too late and we sat up as the field caught us a half lap later.  That Colombian guy ended up catching Jesse’s breakaway and dropping the two of them on the climb a few laps later, at which point UHC sat up on the front and road extremely slow tempo for about 40 minutes.  Just a slight change of circumstances could have resulted in both Jesse and I riding in the break together for most of the race.  Instead, we were punished for our errors by having to ride back in the pack for the rest of the race.

With the break gone, our next goal in the crit was to position Gabe well for the sprint once the break was caught, which was inevitable with a bunch of sprint teams looking for their last chance at glory before the final day of climbing misery.

At five laps to go I still hadn’t seen Gabe for a while so I just concentrated on staying in the top 15-30, moving up on the hill and chopping people on the inside corner after the finish line whenever the opportunity arose.  With two to go I got swarmed and never made a big enough move to regain my position.  I finished 40^th.  If in doubt, always use up extra energy to position yourself well.  We all lost seven seconds from a tiny gap that opened up on the finish straight.  It really was not our best day of crit riding, but we did at least give it a good shot in the beginning.

The Gila Monster: the final and most brutal day of the race, and possibly the hardest day of the entire NRC schedule, assuming you weigh more than 125 pounds.

It’s one thing to have two cat 3 climbs, two cat 2’s, and a cat 1 in a single stage at sea level, but it’s an entirely different beast when it’s all at an elevation of 5,500-7,500 feet.  Most of the climbing comes in the last 50 miles and, assuming you’ve been dropped and the team car is long gone, drinking enough water in those last 50 miles is an impossible task.

Another early morning start at 8:40 meant waking up at 6:30.  The hot water in one of the houses had been out for most of the week, which meant a lot of the guys were walking over to Tiny Allen’s and my house to take showers in the morning.  The only way into the bathroom, being through my bedroom, meant that I was always getting woken up earlier than I intended.  And I am NOT happy to be woken up 10 minutes before my alarm goes off.  Those last 10 minutes are when I usually get my best sleep.   Tiny Alan felt the same way, and got a bit of revenge on Tall Alan when he came over for his early morning shower.  Just seconds before Alan arrived at our door with his towel and shaving kit in hand, Tiny sprinted to the bathroom and took a Gila Monster-sized dump in the toilet to stink up the bathroom for Tall Alan’s shower.  I was greatly amused…and then the stench wafted into the kitchen and I lost all motivation to finish my oats.

The race started off heading east out of town with some rollers, then took a left turn off the highway into a crosswind/false flat section that lead to the first sprint and KOM of the day, both within 15 miles of the start line.  Joe had warned us of this section of road—the lead up to the first climb of the day—since it might be a good opportunity to follow moves and was at the very least, an important time to stay up near the front in order to make the selection in case any splits occurred.  We were on the lookout to get in a break since we really didn’t have much to lose at this point in the stage race.  None of us were in the top 50 GC.  I was planning on conserving until we got close to the top of the climb, and then following moves over the top and after the descent, but somehow 21 guys rolled off the front way earlier than I, or any of my teammates, had anticipated.  Not one HB rider was present in the massive move.  All of us felt pretty foolish that this happened.  Usually early aggression in such a long, hard race is rewarded by getting dropped extra early, like what happened to me last year on this stage (lots of early attacking then getting dropped on the first climb of the day).  But that was not the case today, and we missed out big time.

With the breakaway gone, all seven of us HBers focused on getting water and making sure we hit the first cat 2 climb in the best position as possible, with Jon having our most realistic chance at a decent result of the day.  Jesse and Gabe did a great job riding up near the front and helped Jon stay out of the wind.  Winger, Dan, Colin, and I got bottles from the car and in one feed zone I grabbed THREE bottles with some super fast maneuvering by Alan!

The cat 2 climb blew a large chunk of the peloton off the back.  Jon, Gabe, and I survived.  Jon stayed in the bubble without too much difficulty.  Gabe and myself came off with around 1K to the KOM, but with some hard chasing, got back into the group after the descent.  We got Jon a water and a cold bottle of Coke, yelled at him that the cat 1 climb was coming up soon, then got blown off the pack again once we hit the bottom slopes of the hardest climb of the day.  The entire peloton split at this point and Gabe and I spent the rest of the day riding HARD tempo with a group of about 10-15 guys.  I made sure to attack Gabe once or twice.  I don’t know when it was last that I spent that much time staring so intently at the hub in front of me, void of any thought and focusing only on breathing and pedaling.  It was a lot of climbing for a Bigguns!

Up the road, Jon was gritting his teeth hard to remain in contact with the main front group of 15 riders, who were making quick progress on what was left of the breakaway up the road.  Jon ended up finishing 45^th, which, although not sounding particularly great, was certainly a very good result on such a hard day, especially since 21 guys were already up the road with a six minute gap before the final cat 1 and 2 climbs of the day.  Using a little bike racer math, if that group hadn’t been up there, Jon’s climbing ability probably would have earned him a spot in the top 25.  Bike racer math is often flawed though, considering the fact that it’s completely subjective.

Jesse and Colin rolled in together in a small group, followed by a solo Winger a while later, having ridden the last two hours by himself, suffering in the hot sun and determined to finish.  Dan had been struggling with stomach issues all day long and threw up three or four times during the race.  And so ended our Gila, with Jon taking 47^th on GC, myself barely beating out Gabe for 77^th only because he was penalized for drafting the team car for less than 20 seconds while he helped Jon get back on after a broken spoke on stage 2, Gabe took 79^th, Colin 114^th, and Jesse 116^th.  It’s hard to look at your own personal result and think of all the hard work and suffering you did to earn such a big number, but considering the caliber of teams here and our (for the most part) aggressive racing style, none of us are too upset about how things went.  In fact, we’re all pretty content.  It was a great trip and will likely be one of my favorite memories of the year.  We shared some delicious team dinners cooked by Alan, a lot of inappropriate jokes that I can’t tell you about on this email list serve, and some good quality time flying kites on our rooftop in the hot sun up in the mountains of the Gila National Forest.  And above all, we got to suffer like only a select few in the world will ever know.  Now it’s time to rest up and began the process of blocking those memories of pain from our heads, for if cyclists truly remembered just how much it hurts to bike race, very few of us would line up again next weekend.

Thank you to Doug, our guest mechanic for Gila, for doing an amazing job on all of our bikes.  I still owe you a six-pack of IPA, though I really should make it a full case.

Me after the race with a custom mussette bag my mom sewed last year for Gila. Halloween themed.

The Inner Loop stage of Gila is always a scary one. It start out right at the base of a cat 3 climb, a rolling, exposed to the wind struggle up to the tiny town of Pinos Altos, which is where most of our team is staying. It isn’t that difficult of a climb in terms of steepness until you get to the top, and both years I’ve done Gila, including today, I made it over the climb fairly easily (easily is a VERY relative term in bike racing). But, if you don’t make it over in the main group, you’re in for a very long day. Right after the first KOM at Pinos Altos, there’s a descent, a lot of false flat, and another short steep section that makes up the second cat 3 climb and KOM of the day. Then there’s a long corkscrew descent and a lot of flat and rolling roads before the final climb of the stage heading back to the start/finish line.

Almost half of this stage takes place on a tiny road that winds its way through some of the most beautiful and pristine wilderness in the Southwest, the Gila National Forest. The trees are too short and scrawny to be cut down for timber, there’s no large river to be damned, and the terrain is too rocky and barren for cattle pastures. This is why it’s a National Forest, not BLM land. You’d think that cyclists would have an appreciation for this type of un-raped wilderness, seeing as most of us hate the polluting car culture of America, but the amount of trash and water bottles littered along the road here lead me to a much bleaker conclusion. Even my fellow cyclists don’t really give a shit. I only have three pet peeves: 1) smashing my gum with the front end of my toothbrush and creating a sore that will last for a week, 2) people, and 3) people who litter.

It’s one thing to toss a bottle along a highway or in a town where someone’s going to pick it up as a trophy, I do that, but it’s another thing to toss it in the bushes where it will inevitably slowly break down over 1,000 years and enter the water system and give the trout a third eye. I know that probably won’t happen, and the relatively small amount of trash and plastic bottles we introduce to the environment won’t really matter that much, but it’s the principle that I’m worried about. If cyclists don’t care about the world, who will?

Very few people spend as much time as a cyclist does outside and in that in between area on earth that’s inhabited by both humans and the natural world (roads in the country). Anyways….

The race went well for some of us, not so well for others. Jon and I made it over the first KOM in great position, about 30 guys back from the front. I was hoping that it would split permanently over the top, but things pretty much all came together on the descent.

It didn’t take long for United Healthcare to continue its rampage at the front after the short respite of the downhill. A break of five got up the road, including former teammate and friend Chris Parish of Optum (former friend too—we don’t talk much anymore after he turned pro. Just kidding! No but seriously, Chris, why don’t you ever return my calls anymore?)

The middle part of the race was pretty chill in terms of difficulty and I mainly worked on staying near the front and moving Jon up whenever I saw him. Gabe and Dan were there as well, with Winger on bottle patrol and doing a fine job of it.

Things got hard again near the top of the final KOM when some accelerations were made at the front. This climb featured a descent before the descent and I’d been at the very back, peeing, right before I realized that the climb wasn’t over yet. I booked it to the front just in time for the pace to start up again.

Jon broke a spoke at the base of the descent and Gabe dropped back with him to help him get back on after a quick wheel change. They were both back in the pack pretty quickly and ready for the final 8kms, which were fast and a bit hectic up in the top 40 with constant shuffling and reshuffling at the front as guys tried to position for the 90 degree turn with 1.5K to go. I got knocked once or twice, which made me mad and subsequently not care anymore if I got bumped. A little pain makes the bull angrier.

Still up near the front and feeling “good,” it looked like I’d be entering the final turn in the top 15, then with 150 meters to go there was a big swarm on the left side of the road, causing us on the right to get pinched off and break going into the corner. Shit balls. This was exactly what I knew was going to happen and yet I didn’t move over in time to avoid it. Shit.

There’s a slight uphill drag for about 700 meters, a quick chicane to the right and then left, and a final 500 meters of flat, straight road lined with big trees to the finish line. Being too far back to contest the sprint, I just followed the wheels in front of me and closed a few gaps as I attempted to work my way as close to the front as possible. I came in 24th. Should have gone on the outside with 1.5 K to go!!! ARGHHH!!! Another wasted opportunity! I’ma tear that crit up though if I can on Friday.

Below is the story of my journey to Gila last year. This year was pretty timid to that. Just some time in some cars and planes. As for today’s stage, we helped position each other near the front when we thought things might break up in the wind. Jon, our designated climber of the race, was our biggest priority in terms of positioning, and he ended up 23rd up the cat 1 Mogollon, a good result and well worth any effort we made to bring him up in the peloton. I finished 82nd at 5:33 back from the leader, Rory Sutherland. Aside from the deep pain I felt after I crossed the finish line, a highlight of the race for me was when I got misted by some guy taking a piss off his bike mid way through the race. I told him it tasted like he might have had some asparagus for dinner the night before. He said no, he’d had brussel sprouts.

Stage one was a time trial, uphill and 2.5 miles long (aka 2.4 miles too long for my liking). There’s no bigger waste of time than racing a short prologue like this, even writing about it is less of a waste of time. You have to get to the race extra early to warm up and get ready, the warm up is like 60-90 minutes long, you have to constantly go back to the car to do things like find your ipod, talk to people in the parking lot, switch to race wheels, switch wheels cause you got a flat tire while warming up, go eat a gel, drink more water because it’s really hot out, go poop, take your water bottle cages off because that will save you approximately 1-4 minutes in weight, go poop again, take off your homemade ice vest because it has melted, put your aero helmet on because you need an aero helmet for an uphill TT where you average 17 mph, check the time, continue warming up, put the upper part of your skin suit on, which is difficult because the whole thing is soaking wet with sweat and water bottle water, weigh your bike, get heckled by the race officials about how heavy your bike is…the list goes on and on. Actually no it doesn’t. That’s about it. But it takes forever. And it’s all for less than 10 minutes of racing.

Despite the huge time chunk, and my fake complaining about wasting time (haha, like I have anything better to do), I do in fact like uphill prologues. I’m not particularly good at them, since I’m hugely obese–in bike racing you’re fat if you weigh more 160 or more–what I like about them is the opportunity to really suffer hard and turn your organs into bloody bits and chunks of no-longer-functioning dead flesh. A good uphill TT will leave you feeling as if you just swallowed a hand full of rusty razor blades. Actually, it’s the other way around. Swallowing a handful of rusty razor blades will make you feel as if you just completed an all out uphill TT.

Anyways, the last time I rode up the hill during my warmup I realized I felt pretty good. I got a number in my head for what I thought I might be able to do wattage wise. This ended up hurting my performance because I held back, still feeling really good and standing just about the entire time like former teammate Chris did last year to get 8th, until about a minute to go. The entire time I was fearing the inevitable implosion in my legs that would leave me riding tempo for the rest of the climb and losing serious time. The blow up never happened, and all of a sudden I found out that I hadn’t ridden hard enough. I go some serious hurt on in the last minute though, pumping out 646 watts during the last 45 seconds. There’s a pretty awesome picture of me passing my one minute man right before the finish line in the local newspaper. They got it all wrong though, and write that he’s passing me, and that sucks because he looks really slow in the picture. And on the next page, the section where they talk about the race, all it’s about is the road closures for the rest of the week of racing. People down here like their cars. A lot. Very few commute by bike and we’ve had some complaints from drivers about us being here already.

I finished 49th, at 8:58. Last year I was 48th at 8:59. The times were about 15 seconds slower this year, so my TT was definitely an improvement. The increased quality of field meant that I didn’t place any better though. Our two top guys placed 22nd (steve) and 36th (Ian). Then I went and sat in the river underneath the dam, where I always stand and soak my legs after this TT. This time there were some people fishing, so I asked them what they were fishing for.
Guy: “Anything that bites. Mainly turtles, I guess.”
Me: “I’ve always wondered if there’s snapping turtles in here.”
Guy: “Oh yeah, there was two big ones sitting right over there a minute ago. Bout half way between you and me I guess.”
Me: “Oh. I better stop wiggling my toes then.”
Guy: “He ain’t gonna hurt ya.”
I kept an eye out for turtles after that.

Stage 2. 110 mile rolling road race with quite o bit o wind. My goal was to either get in the break or sheppard Ian and Steve for the finish, which included two short and steep 20 second climbs and a long 300 meter uphill drag to the finish, all within the last 1.5 kilometers. An ideal finish for me, Ian, Steve, and Gabe. And David. And Danny and Jon. So basically our entire team. We were pretty confident that we could lead it out into the final two corners before the climb. “There’s no reason why we can’t be first in that last left hand corner.” We said this multiple times.

We all missed the 2-man move that went 15 miles in, then I basically worked on being near the front for the climbs and any time I thought there would be cross wind. We rode as a team near the front quite a bit, and constantly moved one another up throughout the race to avoid the chaos in the back.

55 miles into the race, in the longest crosswind section, I started following attacks. I did this until I just about blew up, then it got really strung out for the next couple kilometers. I was in some serious pain, then we finally took a left turn onto big highway and had tailwind for the rest of the race, including the upcoming 9 mile climb. I got dropped on the climb the year before, but this year it actually felt pretty chill. The first mile of it hurt, but after that there was enough up and down to recover in between the harder bits. At one time I accidentally went up to the front and got forced to follow an attack. Since I wasn’t sure how long or difficult the climb was going to be (memory issues), I didn’t do that again and just sat in the dwindling pack. Things pretty much stayed together for the climb and mostly came back together on the descent. The next 20 miles were nasty fast with a stiff tailwind. I’m not sure I ever got out of my 11. In the pack we still had myself, Ian, Gabe, and Steve. I felt great and decided that I didn’t need sleep that night, so I downed the rest of my caffeinated gel flask. With Gabe and myself, we were planning on making sure Ian and Steve moved up to the front leading into the final kilometer and I’m sure we could have had at least one of us in the top 10 had it not been for a big crash with five miles to go. Ian went down pretty hard. I slammed my breaks on as hard as they’d go. Someone behind me crashed on my rear wheel. I swerved to the left and avoided two guys that went down right in front of me. I continued death gripping the breaks as I ran over someone’s bike/a bike bounced up and hit me from the right. For a split second after that I thought I might make it, then out of nowhere I saw a guy rolling towards me directly in my path. This was it, I was going over the bars. I rode right over him, heard a small yelp as I ran over my teammate, and came out on the other side still on my bike. Astonished, I stood up to sprint and get back in the pack, but had to stop a few hundred meters later when I realized my wheel was broken. At first I thought it was flat, but got off and saw that the rim was destroyed. Completely un-rideable if I wanted to keep all my front teeth.

I ran back to the crash where all the cars had stopped and got a wheel change and finished 4 minutes down all alone.

I started writing the above a long time ago after stage 2 and pretty much lost most of my motivation by now. Currently I’m up in Pinos Altos, NM getting ready for Gila, which starts tomorrow. After a long day of travel yesterday it feels like we’re on the other side of the country now. Oh wait, we are. If you want to hear about a real day of travel, I’m going to repost my adventure down here last year. I’ll have it up tomorrow at some point.

Anyways, stage 3 was another road race. I finished 20th in a pack sprint that about 75 people were still left in. With 1K to go there was a huge pile up. Breaks were applied and with some quick and lucky maneuvering I miraculously I weaved in and out of the crashed guys on the ground (and the ones crashing all around me) and sprinted onto the back of what was left of the peloton, maybe 30 or 40 guys. I didn’t really have much left to sprint with after that and just road in hard to the line for 20th.

Stage 4 was the crit. I finished 22nd. I should have done much better on that stage since it’s so well suited to me and I felt almost invincible on the climb. Though I was strong, I was cornering pretty poorly (this was my first crit of the year) and I lost a lot of positions on the downhill, which I’d have to make up on the uphill each lap. I think I passed about 15 guys up the hill the last time. Makes me wonder how I would have done had I been positioned top 10 going into the final 300 meters.

Steve earned 15th on GC and 7th and 10th on two stages, so overall our team had a fantastic race. If I hadn’t been held up in the crash on stage 2 I would have been 20th on GC, and Ian probably would have been in the top 20 too, so it’s a bit disappointing seeing what could have been. There’s no time to dwell on the past though, at least not when you’re already at another race. It’s time to go crush it again tomorrow.