MO State Crit

I wasn't sure about going to the MO crit. I've been pretty excited to race cross in the fall and have been working on base miles for that. Anyway, I decided pretty late (on the Sta PV ride) that it would be good to go and support the team and check out the race. I've never been to Jeff City before but almost everyone likes the crit course.

I showed up about an hour before the race, got registered and found out there were going to be about 50 guys in the race. Pretty awesome. My goal was to cover moves and support the team. The race started out at a nice quick pace, and my legs weren't too happy about that. I just tailgunned it for a few laps, then started to try and move up, but didn't make it very far. So I just sat and waited for the pace to ease up. When the first prime was called about 30 mins in, the pace did ease up on the backside, so I launched after Adam Mills and another rider going for the prime. When I got up to them we were about to get caught, so I sat near the front waiting for a counter.

Two great shots from Flannery Allison.

There was another move immediately after, so I just followed wheels and we were clear too. This was a bigger group that continued to go over the next few laps until there were over a dozen riders. At this point people started to skip pulls and let gaps open. There was another prime, so I jumped from that group figuring it would draw a couple of others looking for cash. But nobody came with me. So I just kept riding assuming this would at least give our guys in the group rest before the sprint. I just kept it steady and stayed out for about 5 laps when I saw a small chase coming up with Austin Vinton, Justin Maciekowicz, and Josh Leibowitz. It looked like they had a pretty good gap to the field, so I sat in and took some pulls as I could. With 2 to go we still had 30 seconds and were rotating well. I tried to position myself well for the finish, and put myself on Austin's wheel, but ran out of gas up the last little rise to the finish and ended up 4th. The sprint was just behind us and teammate Jim ended up 10th. Earlier in the day, Brian Bradley won the M40+ race, so in all, it was a pretty good day for the team.

Colavita Cross Country Challenge

A few weeks back I did the CCCC MTB race. It was a great event. I'd not ridden the Wyandotte Lake trails prior to a few days before the race, but was impressed. The Colavita crew did a great job putting on the event and it looked like a very solid showing of racers.

As far as the actual race went, I had some issues. I didn't start well because I was apprehensive about leading the first quarter of the lap. It took about 4 laps to catch on to the leader Roger Williams, and then shortly after I crashed hard, chased hard, started cramping a bit and had to shut things down considerably to keep going the rest of the way.

The whole MTB thing is pretty darn fun. I hope to work on enough skills to be able to go hard without being in constant danger of crashing.

Ok, a few more road races this year before the real season starts!

State Line RR

It has been a while since my last race. Travel for various reasons had me out of town the last couple of weeks. But I did get in a great week of riding in Portland with some great weather and fun climbs.

Being chased - a lot of this going on.

The State Line RR looked like a good race. It is always a bit of a gamble going to new races, as it is never certain what you will get, but the new races this year have been really good. (Salina, Tallgrass, This race). Hopefully they will be back in the future.

More attacking

The cat 1/2/3 field looked good with about 25 starters. I was hoping to get in a breakaway with some others, but that ended up being a challenge. I kept trying to get into a promising move, and there were several, but the field was not willing to let me get much up the road. BB and JB rode well to keep most of the dangerous moves in check that we weren't in, but in the end, Brian West and Andrew Lyles got away, with Brian taking the win. I made it into the final chase group, but was in bad shape. We caught up to Andrew, but I exploded on the last climb with some pretty violent cramping.

That ends the heavy part of my road season. So I'm transitioning to more dirt time in preparation for CX. I'll kick start that by racing at the Colavita MTB race this weekend. I pre-rode the trail on Sunday and it looks like it will be a good time.

State TT & Strava

I tend to be a little slow to jump onto social media (I still don't understand Twitter). But I finally joined Strava. It is a pretty cool application that I think is a better way to view ride data than the Garmin Connect site that I had been using. The problem is now that I know these benchmarks exist, I will have a hard time not chasing them. Anyway, If you want to see my profile it is here: http://app.strava.com/athletes/612424. I've been backing up my GPS files thinking that there may be some new software tool that I would want to upload my data to, so that worked out well here.

The state TT was back on the old Walnut course. Last year there was construction on a course bridge, so we went the opposite direction and it was tough. I really enjoy this course and was looking to have a good day. My time-trialling has been kind of up and down this year. I've felt good and been able to make solo attacks work in road races and crits, but somehow things have not come together in actual time trials. My time at the Hermann TT was a bit slower than in 2011, and the only 10k TT i've done (Bruce Edwards TT) was not a good time either. But I knew this course suited me and i'd been putting in some good time on the TT bike leading into the race.

The think I like most about this course is it breaks naturally into 4 about equal segments that go in all directions, neutralizing the wind a little. I was hoping to break the 54 minute barrier, but just missed out. Here is the file from the race: http://app.strava.com/rides/10993110

At the turnaround

I ended up being second fastest on the day to Bruce Tanner, but won the Cat 1/2 race as Bruce opted to do Masters.

Tulsa

It's taken me a few days to digest Tulsa Tough. Basically, I didn't ride very well, but the hard part was figuring out why.

Friday was really fast but generally pretty safe, because I sat at the very back end of the group and didn't bother trying to move around too much. That isn't a great course for me, there isn't much room to move around and it is very hard to get a breakaway to stick there, even more so with the caliber of field we had.

Saturday I was excited about the race, but really felt pretty bad for the first 40 minutes of the race. I had started near the back, then tried to move up about 20 minutes in which worked for a few laps, then I had no power and had had to maintain the best I could to even stay on. Finally at about 45 minutes in I started to have good legs again and the pace dropped just a little. I was having good success moving up on the start finish straight and in the section after corner 2. Then this happened:

I was ok, just some scrapes and tire burn, but had broken handle bars. Fortunately, Mat Ankeny had some replacement bars for me. I'll say it again, the SRAM folks will keep me coming back for their support of racers.

Sunday morning I was in a bit of a rush having to track down the new bars, install them, check out of the hotel and get down to the race site. Things were close, but it worked out. I had a descent start to the race and felt like things were going good. But I was also having problems with the big corner of the day. First I overcooked it and nearly went over the curb into the grass. Then I got some serious sweat or something in my eyes causing them to burn and get blurry making this corner even worse. This meant I kept losing positions being tentative. So I ended up at the back of the field again, which meant it was only a matter of time before a bunch of us got shelled off the back. That was about 45 mins in.

State RR

Justin and I headed north of Manhattan to the Olsburg RR to compete for the state RR title. For the last few years, the race had been held in Arma, which was a fine course but was a little flat for my tastes (and usually very hot, ~105 by the finish last year) So it was nice to mix it up a bit.

The Olsburg course was really cool, with good pavement and some nice climbs on the second half of the course, plus a tough 500m pitch about 10k from the finish line that served as the KOM point. The Tall Grass Stage Race the week before had also used this RR course, in reverse, which would have also been awesome I think.

Unfortunately, only 3 of us came out for the Cat 1/2 race, which was probably due to 3 other races going on over the weekend and no payouts whatsoever. Anyway, Jack Mason was the other competitor in our field. He has been riding very well this season, so I was interested to see how things would play out. The first few miles were pretty mild, Jack started to take some short digs prior to getting to the climbs. So I countered just to see what would happen, and got a minute gap very quickly. So I just held things at a minute and watched to see how things were playing out behind. Jack was chasing pretty well, and Justin was pulling through too, which made me think he was also feeling pretty good, so after the first lap I sat up and let them back on. Jack knew what was going down at this point. We rode steadily until we got back to the climbs. Over the KOM JB and I just kept upping the pace until we dropped Jack. At the top I drilled it over the flat section before we descended and then just kept the gas on all the way through the finish line. We had a pretty good gap, probably over a minute, but I didn't want to have Jack come back up to us, so I stayed at the front for most of the first half of the last lap as well. We made it back to the climbs on the last lap and were finally able to relax a bit and just go steady through the hills. We got Justin some water at the feed zone and cruised in to go 1-2 for the race.Poor Jack ended up having a really bad day and bonking big time on the last lap.

Salina 2-Day

I ventured over solo to the Salina 2-day event. The original plan was to camp out at Kanopolis Park west of town, but threats of overnight thunder and lightning with hail nixed that. I drove over Sat morning and got in a good 45 minute warmup to get things moving after a long drive. Interestingly, at 9am everyone was still spinning around trying to figure out where the start was. Shortly after, we figured it out and got rolling.

The winds were pretty solidly out of the south from 20-30mph. The course started heading south for about 20 miles, then weaved back west and north the rest of the way. With only 9 starters things were very mellow into the wind. We had a simple rotation pretty much the whole way down until we turned into the cross winds. From there the Colavita trio in the race started to get aggressive and throw down some attacks. They ended up getting one up the road, but he was alone. I tried a little dig into a crosswind section off a corner but didn't get anywhere, so I just rotated in the group until we got to the last westward section and guttered everyone to see who would come up. I ended up getting Spencer Martin and Justin Leopold with me, while Andrew Lyles and Matt Maher chased. We turned north into a tailwind and into a slight climb. I kept the pace really high and found myself alone after a couple of rollers. I just kept rolling, though after the climbing stopped and we went through some more crosswind sections I got caught by the chasers. This was ok because there was still about 15 miles to go and I jumped into the rotation. We just rode at a good pace for the next few miles until we made the last turn in to the finish. It was about 2.5 miles of crosswind. I just kept watching the group, though I think everyone expected me to jump early. I finally went at 400m to go and got a good enough gap to hold to the line. That made for a very long sprint.

I got in a good long spin afterwards to get some more miles on the day. The location for registration and awards was a great AC cooled building with showers and plenty of space to hang out afterwards.

Sunday I took a quick spin in the morning over to check out the crit course. It was a flat figure 8 with wide open corners. If the course were a bit longer you could easily put 150 guys through without a problem. Anyway, some sprinters showed up: Adam Miller, Ryan Christler, and Jarred Young. So I knew that to win I would need to get away on my own eventually. I started the race in cyclocross style, launching off the start line just to see what would happen. Things hung together but just barely, so
I sat in a half lap then went again. This time I got the group to split. the problem was all three fresh guys made the split, plus Spencer (who had minutes before soloed away from the cat 3/4 race pretty much from the gun). We kept the pace pretty good but had some chasers who were bringing us back very slowly. Finally, I put in a big dig, then attacked on the next lap on the tailwind. It worked perfectly as I ended up alone with 5 to go. I went deep and established a good gap that I was able to stick to the line.

The promoters did a good job getting us all on the road super quick after the race was over and did a good job keeping things organized throughout the weekend. Thanks guys!