GDVC Numero Dos

Toed the line for the second time this season.

Went alright. Learned some lessons, gained some fitness, did some decent work towards the end of the race.

Basic synopsis:

Race starts. Attack, chase, attack, chase. Repeat for 10ish minutes. Real break goes off, I miss it. More dudes go, I miss them. The two White brothers are in, so, I'm not exactly looking to drag more people up to the break, which is already large.

However, opportunities will present themselves, and you have to go with it. Get off the front with two. Roll with them for two laps. Take off on my own for 2.5 or 3. Make it up to the back end of the break as they're heading up the hill.

And then, a Baraboo Sharks junior, who I'm sure is not a Cat1/2, pops off the back. Right in front of me. At first I don't even notice, and then, suddenly, there's a 20m gap. At first, I can't even react. I mean, I'm so far into the red that I can't go above LT to save my life.

So I crawl over the hill, bomb down the back side spinning out my legs, and try to latch back on. I get within 20m of the tail end when I run out of steam.

Now, in the past, I have always said "Well why didn't you sprint to catch onto the back end of the group?" when I hear someone complain about not making it all the way up to a break, or latch back on to the main field. Well, I learned my lesson. I tried. I tried real hard. I don't think I could sprint at that point. I apologize to anyone I've said this to before; I now feel your pain.

The rest of the race was basically me being dragged around by Great Dane, who were monitoring the front of the field, waiting for Frankie Dierking to lap the field with the break. When they did catch us, Frankie tried to get off the front again, and a White brother cracked the whip behind me. 30+ seconds of chasing hell, from the S/F to the top of the climb. Job done, I returned to my place as the Grim Reaper at the back of the severely depleted field.

A White brother won, the other got 3rd. I finished somewhere in the 20s out of 40ish starters.

The worst glue job of all time. Period.

I'm not going to take any pictures of the new wheels with tires mounted. To be perfectly honest, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I'd recieve an F. Functionality? An A or a B. I glued the shit out of those tires. They're on there, but I think I'll be finding tiny, random bits of glue on my rims for the next year, and picking glue off the sidewalls of my tires in my downtime for the entire season.

Oh, and I almost certainly gave myself cancer today. Breathing in that amount of toluene, xylene and God knows what else is a damn near sure-fire way to give yourself some interesting cell mutations and/or runaway cell growth.

Race tomorrow, report Sunday night or Monday night.

P.s. On the non-cycling front, I'm doing some interesting things at work lately. I'm doing a couple of different analyses to determine where and when chloride started poking its ugly little head into the groundwater near the Wayne County Landfill. Doing some FOIA file review, converting the data I find in the FOIA files to Excel, uploading those into the database, querying data from that, and maybe modeling chloride concentrations in the area over time using Surfer/AutoCAD.

New wheels, bike.

Soon, I will be making a pretty sweet addition to the stable. Well, two additions.

First, my new race wheels will be coming on Tuesday, if Brown Santa/UPS keep their word. Next, and slightly more awesome, is the upcoming purchase of a Gary Fisher Paragon...which is, gasp, a mountain bike.

The good people at my LBS, Prairie Path Cycles, are going to give me a nice discount on the Paragon, simply because I'm a member of the club. Now, some people will say "Well yeah, of course they are, dumbass" to this. However, as many of you (all 4 of you) know, ABD is, as far as I know, almost entirely composed of road-riding, dirt-fearing types who do road races, crits, TTs, and God help them, triathlons.

So what does this mean? In my estimation, ABD should have little to no interest in my pursuit of off-road awesomeness. And through some associative property, they shouldn't really give a damn about giving me a discount on an MTB. As I'm not Sven Nys, Gilberto Simoni or some other big name taking up MTBing, they won't rake in any more money or gain much more sponsorship visibility by having me racing in the whatever-class MTB race in Cheeseville, WI this summer. Quite literally, I'll be substituting helping my teammates in some races to help myself. Not saying I'm an intergral part (not even a PDT member) of their successes, but a body to help work at the front is never a bad thing, and one less is never good.

Because of this, I'd like to say thanks to the good people at PPC for their support of me, the ABD club, and cycling in general. You guys rock.

Coming soon: a debacle in the glueing of tubular tires to carbon rims.

Race Report: Burnham Racing Super Crit

Pic 1: Sitting in, being lazy.
Pic 2: going too early, blowing up, kind of leading out a teammate, and still rolling through in third for the prime
Pic 3: not animating the race in the least
Pic 4: Refer to Nos. 1 and 3.

First race of the year. Didn't expect much, to be honest. Just wanted to roll out from the starting line and see how I felt when the pace got hot and heavy.

Turns out, I'm in better shape than I thought. I woke up this morning at 141lbs, which, to my knowledge, is the least I've weighed since sophomore year at U of I. And going by appearances, I still have plenty that I could lose.

So, while I'm in wicked 20min shape, and doing well in the weight class arena, I didn't know beforehand how the ol' legs were going to react to a couple dozen surges over the course of 75min of lovely crit racing.

Turns out, not too badly. Even found a pair and went for two (2) primes, and placed in the top 3 each time. Unfortunately, most primes don't pay three deep. However, this still gives me hope, in that I was actually in position to sprint for a non-break prime, and that I had legs to stand up and give it a go. And the best part is that while I got beaten, it wasn't by a huge margin, and I have sprinted a grand total of once, yes, once this year before this race. That occurring on a group ride with the IU boys, and going from 20 to 30mph in the little ring, for about 50m. So there is most definitely room for improvement, with raw power production, technique, and positioning on the bike.

The race ended with mixed feelings. I was forced off the road by someone who made the poor choice to stop sprinting, and then drift into me. Which is obviously something I'd like to avoid in race situations. The positive side to this is that I was actually in something resembling a decent position coming out of the last corner, and was ready to put up a decent sprint, riding into the draft and coming around guys who had gone too early on the quarter mile finishing drag.

Didn't work out this time, but there's always next race. Pictures coming soon.

F**k me and call me Sally. No more 'Toona.

Well, sort of.

The Tour de 'Toona is going to be a single day this year. And not only that, but a crit. Lame.

While crits have grown on me in recent (well, I've only been racing for two) years...err...times, my goal for the season was to wind it up at some sort of mountainous stage race this summer. Crush souls, go fast in an uphill manner, that sort of thing.

So, I'm looking to find some sort of replacement. Anyone knows of any sweet, sweet road races that feature one or several 5+ mile climbs, in the KY/PA/TN/NC/VA/WV region of the nation, let me know. I'm going to get pummeled this season, and I think it's only right that I get a chance to dish it right back, just once, to some locals out East.

Synopsis: find me a race with wicked mean climbs, out East.