Millport Road Race.. (Make mine a double)

Well another race weekend and I came into it with some real hard training. At the training crit on Thurday night the team worked really hard. We spent much of the ride with either someone in a break off the front and/or guys sitting on the front of the ride pulling breaks back. I also got some good advice from Trey that really motivated me. At one point during the crit I was out with him and several others trying to breakaway from the field. Trey and Dean from the Alliance team both made mammoth pulls at 35+ mph and I was next in line.. We had about 50 meters on the field and the break would have stuck except I couldn't pull thru.. The pain was too much and I sat up.. Trey came up to me after the ride and told me basically if I had pulled thru we would have kept that break going. He said when you feel the pain that's when you gotta push the hardest everyone's in pain you have to remember the pain is only temporary.. Your not gonna feel it tonight when your sitting on the couch.. He's right .. When I think back to the breaks or winning moves that I see work its always after a very hard effort when everyone's tired an the spirt to chase is at its lowest...

So are you wondering how the Millport race went for the team? It was a great race for all and personally one of my finest days of racing as I placed top ten in both the 4/5 and 3/4 races...(A double). The course was fairly flat with one big ring climb in the middle. We had racers in both the 3/4 and the 4/5 and our results were very good. Some real nice pictures to look at with bunches of IH riders at the front in total domination :). Best finishes come from pushing the pace right after hard efforts!

Union Grove(Its all about the Team)

Union Grove was a race that I crashed at last year.. I was inline for a top 5 finish when a guy crashed into me with 50M to go.. That crash was in the back of my mind as we raced this year...

Our results as a team were excellent and the way we rode is something that we can build on. In the 5, 4/5 and the 3/4 we rode we'll and had good placing in all races. I felt that we really showed good team racing and team tatics. In fact other racers have commented on how well we work as a team. What we need to work on is the final piece of the pie.. Getting a win for the team...

This is a hard goal as it means we have to balance working for ourselves and our own placing vs working for the team and a possible win for a team mate. I don't think the two ideas are counter productive. You can work hard for the team and still have something left to get a good placing. It means working and riding smart and its going to take time and practice to get good at. Our goal over the next couple of weeks will be to step up how we use our team tatics in our training races on Tues and Thurs.

Turkey Hill (Good Ice Cream... Tough Race)

Turkey Hill is one of the longest races of the year at 55 miles... However in an odd mistake the officials made the race EVEN LONGER by adding an extra lap for a total of 62 leg breaking miles... Things that would have been nice to have for the race:

• Someone supporting the team in the Feed Zone
• At least 1 More water bottle(to add to the 2 I had on board)
• One less Lap :)

We had a strong group of guys at the race and we finished well consider the size of the field(125) and the strength of the competition.

Next up Union Grove...

Tour de Ephrata: Mt. Pain TT(Not Just a Clever Name) and Crit

As I said in my last post we reconned the Mt. Pain TT course on Saturday.. When we went up the hill I thought this won't be that bad(see the hills profile below in the previous post).. Well lets just say I under estimated how the 5 mile TT effort before the 4 mile hill climb would effect me. The title Mt. Pain is very appropriate as I don't know that I've ever felt that much pain during a bike ride. Once again I was disappointed with my result but impressed by the guys on the team. Both Bryan and Jim had excellent times in the TT and the efforts pushed them into top spots in GC.

Once the TT was over we had to kill 4 hours waiting for the crit to start in downtown Ephrata. A couple of points about the crit...

• Note to self don't start a 90 rider crit in the back....I know better than that.. It took about 20 minutes of really hard racing just to get up to the top 20 racers.
• Crits are dangerous... We had 2 guys go down in the crit .. Both Chuck and Jeff were okay, but man its not fun to hit the pavement at 30+ mph.
• Its tough to get your body to work hard after you've abused yourself in a grueling uphill time trail... Why am I doing this? Oh because I love to race.... Yeah that's it..

As a team we competed well in the Crit and our efforts for the weekend were rewarded with Bryan getting 5th overall in Cat 5 and Jim getting 3rd overall in Cat 4. To the wounded speedy recoveries. I'm including a link to the complete results for our weekend of racing.