It's racing season again. For you that means I subject you to overly verbose descriptions of a bunch of idiots that can't seem to figure out that they would get where they are going a lot quicker and with a lot less pain if they stood still ...such are the sad tragedies of racing in circles.
For me it means spending more time looking forward to the next race than learning from the last, a predictable feeling of ugggg (medical term for this guy on the left) in my Monday legs, and the bladder of a pregnant octogenarian. I'm sure that you didn't need to know that, but seriously, WTF? My only thoughts are that I am a both copious and salty sweater (that's a person that produces a lot of sweat and leaves behind deposits of salt on my body and clothes when I race--not to be confused with an oversized, and over seasoned winter garment). Sorry bad humor. Back to my line of thought--after ditching all that salt I think it might be some kind of osmosis gone wild until my body equalizes thus making me run to the bathroom every 15 minutes. If anyone has an educated explanation that would be appreciated. Nonsensical opinions will be accepted too.
The racing this weekend started with the first in the Mason Lake series which had uncharacteristically nice weather. This doesn't really come as any surprise because the weather gods in the Northwest like to taunt us with some nice days before bringing the clouds in for another six to eight weeks. Dirty Bastards (note that the capitalization is not a typo; around here Dirty Bastards is the proper name for the springtime weather gods).
The course is a lightly rolling 12 mile loop around Mason Lake. There are no appreciable climbs, but after months of not racing and 6 laps, the dinky little rollers that do exist start to wear you down. Actually, to be fair, they started to wear me down after about four laps, but we'll get to that. The race started with a fairly mild first lap that had some people testing the field with some attacks, but nothing that stuck or got more than a 20 second lead. Sometime in lap two a move started to go off the front with two riders (Ian Tubbs, and Chad Nikolz) that are really strong. I saw it start to go and was able to hop onto Chad's wheel. There were roughly 13 of us initially and while it lacked organization at first we started working well together. Well, most of us did. There were two riders from The Valley team that were just sitting on the back. I couldn't understand why, and a bunch of riders in the break were discussing it with The Valley guys. I don't know if the peer pressure worked or if the Valley guys changed their minds, but once we built up a two minute gap one of them (Derik Archibald) started working with us fairly consistently, but the other (Rob Campbell) never did much for the break. At some point early on when we were still going strong, we lost a couple riders. One from the Garage (Michael Murden) and another guy I never saw. Most of the race really wasn't very interesting, just rotating through and building up the gap. There was one point maybe five laps in where we were convinced that we were pissing away our lead, but when we got the time check from the follow car we were sitting five minutes up. So much for pissing away our lead. After four laps I was starting to feel kind of tired. Not in danger of getting dropped, but the rollers--slight as they were, started to burn more than a little. Fortunately once we got to the last lap I got an adrenaline boost. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug. Suddenly I didn't feel tired at all, I had a big ol' smile on my face and everything was peachy keen.
In the last lap attacks started coming consistently, but since there were two teams in the break that had two people (Valley and Broadmark), and one team that had three people (Recycled Cycles), I didn't really have to chase any of them down. I just waited for one of the teams that wasn't represented in the attack to chase it down and hopped on their wheel. Now if an attack had gone off with a member from each of those three I would have been worried, and would have had to chase. Fortunately for me, that didn't happen. As we were approaching the finish Ian Tubbs put in an attack that didn't last long. Everyone knows that Ian can lay down a very aggressive pace if he gets a decent gap, so we all jumped on him immediately. Ian Tubbs, Derik Archibald, and Ian Mckissick provided the leadout from around 1000 meters to go. I got on Ian Mcissick's wheel and he started to die at about 250 to go and was really toast by 225 when I started to come around him. I had Chad and Rob on my wheel and knew that if I really started my sprint that far out I would just be giving them the perfect leadout. With that in mind I came around Ian relatively slowly and both Rob and Chad came around me at full speed 20 meters later. I ducked in behind them as best I could, and tried to come around them in the last hundred meters. Rob started to celebrate a little early (hands in the air) but then saw me coming up behind him and got his hands back down on the bars to put in a few extra strokes and hold me off. I managed to just barely beat Chad to the line for second (I heard someone say there were ~65 racers total, but I don't know how accurate that is).
My mistake in that sprint was getting on Ian's wheel instead of Rob's. Ian had been off the front of the group for half of the final lap and was pretty fatigued, Rob on the other hand had sat for most of the day and is one heck of a sprinter. Oh well, second is my best finish in a 1-2 race so far and I am not disappointed. Just eager to do better (statistically, not likely to happen this coming weekend, but I'll try). That being said Mason Lake is just a training race and you are racing for nothing but experience and pride. No prizes, no points, nada. Well that isn't entirely true. In my carpool shotgun for the return trip went to the top finisher in the car. I cherished that ride home in shotgun.
Sunday was the Ice Breaker Time Trial.
I sucked.
A lot.
9th place
Every time that I think I have myself figured out, I'm wrong. I thought that I was a good time trialist and couldn't put together a sprint to save my life. Then I go and put together a decent (albeit far from great) sprint and a terrible TT. I'm done trying to figure myself out.
For me it means spending more time looking forward to the next race than learning from the last, a predictable feeling of ugggg (medical term for this guy on the left) in my Monday legs, and the bladder of a pregnant octogenarian. I'm sure that you didn't need to know that, but seriously, WTF? My only thoughts are that I am a both copious and salty sweater (that's a person that produces a lot of sweat and leaves behind deposits of salt on my body and clothes when I race--not to be confused with an oversized, and over seasoned winter garment). Sorry bad humor. Back to my line of thought--after ditching all that salt I think it might be some kind of osmosis gone wild until my body equalizes thus making me run to the bathroom every 15 minutes. If anyone has an educated explanation that would be appreciated. Nonsensical opinions will be accepted too.The racing this weekend started with the first in the Mason Lake series which had uncharacteristically nice weather. This doesn't really come as any surprise because the weather gods in the Northwest like to taunt us with some nice days before bringing the clouds in for another six to eight weeks. Dirty Bastards (note that the capitalization is not a typo; around here Dirty Bastards is the proper name for the springtime weather gods).
The course is a lightly rolling 12 mile loop around Mason Lake. There are no appreciable climbs, but after months of not racing and 6 laps, the dinky little rollers that do exist start to wear you down. Actually, to be fair, they started to wear me down after about four laps, but we'll get to that. The race started with a fairly mild first lap that had some people testing the field with some attacks, but nothing that stuck or got more than a 20 second lead. Sometime in lap two a move started to go off the front with two riders (Ian Tubbs, and Chad Nikolz) that are really strong. I saw it start to go and was able to hop onto Chad's wheel. There were roughly 13 of us initially and while it lacked organization at first we started working well together. Well, most of us did. There were two riders from The Valley team that were just sitting on the back. I couldn't understand why, and a bunch of riders in the break were discussing it with The Valley guys. I don't know if the peer pressure worked or if the Valley guys changed their minds, but once we built up a two minute gap one of them (Derik Archibald) started working with us fairly consistently, but the other (Rob Campbell) never did much for the break. At some point early on when we were still going strong, we lost a couple riders. One from the Garage (Michael Murden) and another guy I never saw. Most of the race really wasn't very interesting, just rotating through and building up the gap. There was one point maybe five laps in where we were convinced that we were pissing away our lead, but when we got the time check from the follow car we were sitting five minutes up. So much for pissing away our lead. After four laps I was starting to feel kind of tired. Not in danger of getting dropped, but the rollers--slight as they were, started to burn more than a little. Fortunately once we got to the last lap I got an adrenaline boost. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug. Suddenly I didn't feel tired at all, I had a big ol' smile on my face and everything was peachy keen.
In the last lap attacks started coming consistently, but since there were two teams in the break that had two people (Valley and Broadmark), and one team that had three people (Recycled Cycles), I didn't really have to chase any of them down. I just waited for one of the teams that wasn't represented in the attack to chase it down and hopped on their wheel. Now if an attack had gone off with a member from each of those three I would have been worried, and would have had to chase. Fortunately for me, that didn't happen. As we were approaching the finish Ian Tubbs put in an attack that didn't last long. Everyone knows that Ian can lay down a very aggressive pace if he gets a decent gap, so we all jumped on him immediately. Ian Tubbs, Derik Archibald, and Ian Mckissick provided the leadout from around 1000 meters to go. I got on Ian Mcissick's wheel and he started to die at about 250 to go and was really toast by 225 when I started to come around him. I had Chad and Rob on my wheel and knew that if I really started my sprint that far out I would just be giving them the perfect leadout. With that in mind I came around Ian relatively slowly and both Rob and Chad came around me at full speed 20 meters later. I ducked in behind them as best I could, and tried to come around them in the last hundred meters. Rob started to celebrate a little early (hands in the air) but then saw me coming up behind him and got his hands back down on the bars to put in a few extra strokes and hold me off. I managed to just barely beat Chad to the line for second (I heard someone say there were ~65 racers total, but I don't know how accurate that is).
My mistake in that sprint was getting on Ian's wheel instead of Rob's. Ian had been off the front of the group for half of the final lap and was pretty fatigued, Rob on the other hand had sat for most of the day and is one heck of a sprinter. Oh well, second is my best finish in a 1-2 race so far and I am not disappointed. Just eager to do better (statistically, not likely to happen this coming weekend, but I'll try). That being said Mason Lake is just a training race and you are racing for nothing but experience and pride. No prizes, no points, nada. Well that isn't entirely true. In my carpool shotgun for the return trip went to the top finisher in the car. I cherished that ride home in shotgun.
Sunday was the Ice Breaker Time Trial.
I sucked.
A lot.
9th place
Every time that I think I have myself figured out, I'm wrong. I thought that I was a good time trialist and couldn't put together a sprint to save my life. Then I go and put together a decent (albeit far from great) sprint and a terrible TT. I'm done trying to figure myself out.
posted by Jamie Stangeland at Wednesday, March 08, 2006
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