Last weekend saw the birth of my son, so my racing was tempered a bit. However Eric was out there stomping on the 3s once again in search of the overall GTS title and upgrade points! Check out his progress:
The last weekend of the training series has just ended, and with good results. Saturday was at river falls and the only thing that made the course troubling was the narrow road that made it difficult to move up through the field. The 1k long climb to the finish wasn't as bad as everyone made it out to be. It started like all the others, an attack or two per lap with everyone eager to chase them down immediately. So I stayed near the front and just got into someone's slip stream and follow them with minimal effort. But after seeing that no one was going to let anything get away, I drifted back to about mid-pack. And unbeknown to me, a rider got away off the front and had his team blocking quite well. By the time I heard about him, he had over a minute on us. So I spent the next couple laps fighting to the front to get that gap down. By the time I got there he was something like 1:20 ahead. I got it back down to 40 seconds within a lap and it stayed there until the last lap. We had him in sight as we started out final ascent towards the finish. I got antsy and took off about half way up and had a good gap, but I hit my limit and couldn't keep my pace high enough to stay away, and a small group was able to catch me. I got 10th, but it was a good gauge for me to see where my fitness is. Oh well there's always tomorrow to make up for it.
Sunday is here and it's the last race of the series. I've had good performances here the previous two weekends and I was planning on doing the same. Right from the gun I went off and tried to get myself into another break away. But the bullseye was really big on my back today. I attacked 4 or 5 times on the first lap with no results. I'd look back and the field would be strung out behind me or a couple of people would go with me and then not pull through. It was really frustrating and it went on for four laps! I tried everything, attacking on the climbs counter-attacking an attack that just got reeled back in, everything and still nothing. In the last mile of the 4th lap a group of about 7 riders finally got off the front with about a 20 second gap. I saw my chance and gassed it, I took one rider with me and we caught the group quickly. I yelled for everyone to hit it and that we had a good gap. However there was a problem, only about three of us seemed to know what we were doing. Nobody else was pulling through and we were caught shortly after the start of the next lap. So I sat up and just soft pedaled at the front for the next few miles. The Hincapie riders were attacking as much as me and I was trying to get off the front with one of them since they seemed strong enough to make it work. Coming into the headwind on the 5th lap a Hincapie rider surged a little and no one reacted, so I put in a good effort and only two riders chased me this time. I had one of the Hincapie riders and my break away buddy from the first race there with me. We had a decent gap and when I flicked my elbow to have the next guy take a pull, he said he didn't have anything. So I just put my head down and drove on, opening the gap up even more. Eventually he and the Barley's rider started doing pulls and I was finally able to recover a little. We only had a couple more laps to go and stay away, but after all the work I did earlier, I wasn't sure if my legs would have enough in them to make it the rest of the way. We worked together perfectly and the course marshal informed us before the last lap that we had 40 seconds on a chase group of 6. By the last lap with about 2 or 3 miles to go he informed us that we had 1:40 on them! They must have stopped working together or maybe they all just got tired. The head wind really picked up during the last 3 laps. With about 2 miles to go, I was sitting third wheel, and the rider I was drafting must have gotten blown over a little by the wind because my front wheel managed to just catch his derailleur. One of my spokes snapped instantly and it was just jingle-jangling around making all sorts of racket. I didn't have the presence of mind to open my brakes up, so the rim was rubbing them really bad. I thought I was just getting tired. But I managed to make it to the finish line uncontested for another big break away victory. Now I get to upgrade and do the same amount of work for the team chasing down breakaways instead of being in them.
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