The Bright Side

What's the best part about crashing during an early spring local race???

It's usually cold enough that you're wearing lots of clothing (ie. protection) if you eat pavement.
So yeah, my crash-less streak (369 days for those of you counting) came to an end on Sat. during a local business park crit. I clipped a pedal going around a round-about because I was sick of the Pippster gapping me off every corner we went through. Kinda backfired. Little road rash, little collarbone scare but turned out fine, considering. And I clotted!!! Yay! Casualties included bib shorts, jersey, left glove, left knee warmer, and right arm warmer - not to mention scrapes on shoes, left pedal (duh), skewers and shifters. Sorry Mr. Olson. Pretty sure I was going to win that race, too. Hadn't decided how I was going to beat Frank Pipp, Pete Lopinto, Henk Vogels, and a few others to the line but I still had 6 miles to figure that out. I'm pretty sure it wasn't going to be by out-sprinting them though. :)
I decided to jump back on my steed on Sun. for another business park crit in boulder. It was just your run-of-the-mill local crit with 7 Toyota Uniteds, 2 Health Nets, 2 Slipstreams, 2 Team Type 1's, 2 THF Realty, a Jelly Belly, a slew of super strong amateurs....and don't forget the 2 Bissell riders! (Garrett and I) A little aside: not only was Toyota fielding an entire team with 2 team directors at this local college crit, they were also radioed up. I guess they really wanted that $200 first place prize. Sounds like someone is bitter... As you could probably guess, I didn't do all that well in this one either. My main objective was to make it really hard and get a good workout by attacking at every opportunity - which I did to my own peril. After my 3rd attack got reeled in, the break that stuck countered and I wasn't able to follow. A few minutes later my 5 or 6th attack resulted in a gap over the field along with Ben Day. We were making ground on the lead 5 (which he had 3 teammates in) when he attacked me after a pull into the wind and I had no response. I was little irked at this (mostly at myself for getting dropped) so I let the field catch me and made it my mission to help pull back the break so Garrett could contend for the sprint win. I rotated on the front with 3 other dudes for a few laps until it got to 4 laps to go. I then put in a really hard lap on the front, pulled the break to within 8s or so, and looked back to pull off and had 3 Toyota guys right behind me just smiling. It was clearly on me to bring it back at that point so I went all out for another lap but I made no dent in the advantage and so when I pulled off w/ 1 to go, the field was left to contend for 6th. Grrrr. I was really irritated w/ myself for a) getting dropped by Day during our bridge attempt, and b) not being able to pull back the break. BUT, looking at the bright side - I felt really strong again, I got a really good workout in, I'm not going to race w/ reckless abandon (r.e. like an idiot) in our team races coming up, and Toyota is not going to have a numbers advantage on us at the big races. Oh, and it's a LOCAL MARCH CRIT.
Got some pics here taken by Rebecca, who made it to her very first bicycle race on Sunday:
artsy photo of the start - look at that product placement!



Garrett and I posing with some goofball grinning in the background. However, turns out that goofball was the first amateur finisher on the day. Props Logan!











An early break containing Ben Day, Tommy D., me, Johnny Clarke? and Matt Cooke? who needs NRC classification?




closing on the lead break moments before I was discarded like a saturated kleenex.





Next up is San Dimas and Redlands. So get ready Aunt Margaret and Uncle Jim - we'll be infiltrating your home and fridge before you know it! And soon I'll be sporting my killer tan lines once again!
Oh and last week marked the 1 year anniversary of my being diagnosed w/ a DVT (blood clot in leg). I'm thankful to be 1) alive and 2) racing my bike. Both of which were in doubt at several different times in the previous 370 days.