Writing this on the way to a race, the mobile way. Who would have thought technology would be so great?
Anyways, here's an update
Toona
What a fun race. A lot of ups and downs...literally... we ended up getting a couple of condos at the blue knob resort on the top of a mountain. By no means was this place a resort. No internet, no ac, no versus. This made the other half of being a cyclist, recovery, pretty tough, and ended with us and the Aussies from the Canadian Garneau team huddled around the router on the wall of the rental office at the condos that had internet. Crazy I know. With that said I was looking forward to having a good ride there. With my ride at nats just a week before I was excited to see what I could do with the pros.
Stage 1- 3 mile prologue, 19 turns. Usually I love time trials, but these short ones just hurt. Think of it as getting punched in your happy place. It's super painful. Combined that with 19 turns and you have a solo crit effort. Anyways, lost about 30 seconds. A lot, but the top 10 was presented by pure black racing. I don't think they had a guy out of the top 10.
Stage 2
This road race was a mental test for me and I failed. It was just one it those days where I didn't want to ride my bike. Ended up riding most of the stage by myself. I was riding along the finish climb when I heard somebody shout 'you have 2 minutes left!' I gave it a good effort and crossed the line with 3 seconds to spare for time cut. Close call. Thinking back on it I feel like I could have ridden well up the climb with the group. Don't give up kids, it sucks.
Stage 3-
A hard road race with a 10 k climb about halfway through the stage that went past our condos, with the last 2k being on gravel. It made me think about the epic giro climbs. I thought to myself before the stage that if I wasn't riding well by this point, heading to the condos and stealing the interwebs wouldn't seem like such a bad idea. Anyway this stage was a cluster. The moto officials clearly didn't get a course sheet, because 5 k in they stopped dead in the road and caused bodies flying everywhere. Shortly after on a sketchy downhill the field was single file and we hit some oil. More bodies down. Again on the highway, we were told to do a u-turn because the motos thought we went the wrong way. Luckily we all made it through. Going into the climb the field was getting antsy. We hit the climb and bissell did a full blown leadout shredding the field. It looked like a bomb went off. I was about a minute off the leaders going over the top. Once we got off the descent we came to a fork in the road with no marshall. This ended in us riding circles around Pennsylvania, missing the second feed zone, riding on the highway and coming to the finish the wrong way, 15 minutes before the break. Due to some stellar promoting and officiating, we were given a pro rated (guessing) time of 49 minutes down. Classy.
Stage 4-
Crits. Suck. Enough said. Ended up tailgunning and riding in otb to end a crazy tour de toona.
While this wasn't a great week for me on the bike it motivates me to turn things around and get my.act together for the rest of the season. Superweek update upcoming.
Anyways, here's an update
Toona
What a fun race. A lot of ups and downs...literally... we ended up getting a couple of condos at the blue knob resort on the top of a mountain. By no means was this place a resort. No internet, no ac, no versus. This made the other half of being a cyclist, recovery, pretty tough, and ended with us and the Aussies from the Canadian Garneau team huddled around the router on the wall of the rental office at the condos that had internet. Crazy I know. With that said I was looking forward to having a good ride there. With my ride at nats just a week before I was excited to see what I could do with the pros.
Stage 1- 3 mile prologue, 19 turns. Usually I love time trials, but these short ones just hurt. Think of it as getting punched in your happy place. It's super painful. Combined that with 19 turns and you have a solo crit effort. Anyways, lost about 30 seconds. A lot, but the top 10 was presented by pure black racing. I don't think they had a guy out of the top 10.
Stage 2
This road race was a mental test for me and I failed. It was just one it those days where I didn't want to ride my bike. Ended up riding most of the stage by myself. I was riding along the finish climb when I heard somebody shout 'you have 2 minutes left!' I gave it a good effort and crossed the line with 3 seconds to spare for time cut. Close call. Thinking back on it I feel like I could have ridden well up the climb with the group. Don't give up kids, it sucks.
Stage 3-
A hard road race with a 10 k climb about halfway through the stage that went past our condos, with the last 2k being on gravel. It made me think about the epic giro climbs. I thought to myself before the stage that if I wasn't riding well by this point, heading to the condos and stealing the interwebs wouldn't seem like such a bad idea. Anyway this stage was a cluster. The moto officials clearly didn't get a course sheet, because 5 k in they stopped dead in the road and caused bodies flying everywhere. Shortly after on a sketchy downhill the field was single file and we hit some oil. More bodies down. Again on the highway, we were told to do a u-turn because the motos thought we went the wrong way. Luckily we all made it through. Going into the climb the field was getting antsy. We hit the climb and bissell did a full blown leadout shredding the field. It looked like a bomb went off. I was about a minute off the leaders going over the top. Once we got off the descent we came to a fork in the road with no marshall. This ended in us riding circles around Pennsylvania, missing the second feed zone, riding on the highway and coming to the finish the wrong way, 15 minutes before the break. Due to some stellar promoting and officiating, we were given a pro rated (guessing) time of 49 minutes down. Classy.
Stage 4-
Crits. Suck. Enough said. Ended up tailgunning and riding in otb to end a crazy tour de toona.
While this wasn't a great week for me on the bike it motivates me to turn things around and get my.act together for the rest of the season. Superweek update upcoming.
posted from Bloggeroid
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