Obligatory Update

The updates have turned to a chore at this point, after a horrible evening of racing last night. I started off NVGP with a decent time trial. My legs felt good. Our team director, Marion Clignet, said I left a lot out there and should have pounded the flat more before the finishing climb. I was pretty excited about the week and happy that my legs were turning on.

After the morning TT, we had a downtown twilight crit. This was my worst race in my short cycling career. It was the first race I've been pulled from. It cost me ~24minutes in the GC (General Classification), because they pulled us at lap 20 of 40 and gave us average lap times as the gap for those we missed. I believe that about 50 of 110 riders were pulled and given times based on remaining laps or dropped out. Pretty brutal considering I could have ridden 26-27mph by myself for the remaining 20 laps and been down a few minutes--that's bike racing I guess.

I knew it coming in, but I really need to work on cornering. It hadn't caught up to me in such a major way until last night. It was a 6 corner crit over mixed surface including brick, manhole covers, surface felt like a tennis court, etc. I was getting gapped in every corner, and we were getting up into 30-35mph in each straight. Apparently the place to pass folks was the corner, where I was getting gapped. After 10 laps of sprinting out of the saddle every corner, my legs were toast.

So, I'm fighting for stages at this point. We have a ~67 mile road race that finishes with 5 circuit/crit type laps. It may not be a very interesting race if United Health Care sits on the front at 30mph the whole time. We shall see...