TST
Sleet fell from the sky, dogs attacked Rob, shit hit the fan.
That race was hard. Very, very, hard. It was raining before the race started and it never really stopped. Well unless you count when it turned to sleet and then snow. It definitely wasn't raining while it was snowing but those are some pretty fine hairs to split. Ten minutes into the race I couldn't really feel my fingers or toes and by the end my manual dexterity was pretty abysmal. I could barely pull the breaks, I couldn't squeeze my bottle, I didn't even try to open a cliff bar and eat, and shifting gears consisted of taking the frozen lump of ice on the end of my wrist and swinging it at my levers in a somewhat controlled manner. As a result upshifting when I meant to downshift and vice versa happened several times.
There was a break early on that got a couple of minutes or more on the field which was making me very nervous, especially in the middle when everyone seemed pretty content to just roll along at a fairly unaggressive clip. At one point I tried attacking and got a little gap on the field when one of the flaggers at an intersection was yelling at me. All that I heard was "blah blah blah left. Blah blah blah left." So I turned left. Turns out that was wrong. Probably for the best anyway as I didn't have much of a gap and they didn't seem to want to let me open it up. None the less I was pissed. I managed to make it over the first few hills in the top ten of the main group. As I write it staying up front over the hills sounds like a good idea--seems easy enough, but man did it suck. I nearly cracked going up every single one of those. That being said, I didn't crack and was even the one pushing the pace a couple of times. At least I was until Ian Mckissick, Andy Fischer, Sam Johnson, or Tom Peterson would cruise by and really put the hurt on.
Damn them.
When the last big climb rolled up I started up front but was getting the hurt put on and ended up on the wheel of someone who was dropping fast. I passed him and tried to keep pace with the leaders but as we crested the top and started into the nasty rollers along the top I was about 20 meters back and it took for frickin ever to get back on. I did make it back on and after a short breather felt pretty strong again. Over the rollers and into the descent there were a bunch of small attacks a couple of which I was in, but none stuck until with two or three miles to go Ian Mckissick attacked and floated around 100-200 meters off the front for a while. I thought about trying to bridge but would have just pulled everyone up with me. I was somewhat surprised that Broadmark (who had 3 of the 14 riders in the group) didn't set up a chase. Someone pointed out to me later that the Broadmark riders in the lead group weren't really local and may not have known that Ian can hold a gap like that and won't just die if you don't chase him hard. As we rolled through 500 meters to go I was sitting on Kenny's wheel in good position in the pack. Kenny realized he was in shitty position and slowed up/pulled off. Being the idiot that I am I said "dum-dee-dum, better start my sprint WAY TOO FRICKIN SOON!" So I did. Needless to say a got passed by a lot of people starting 50-100 meters from the line. Moron. One of these days I will learn that lesson, but in the meantime the competition is going to keep beating it into my skull until I get it.
So I totally biffed the sprint, but I'm happy I made the lead group (well, technically, the second group given that Ian won off the front).
Oh yea, as the first line indicates Rob Campbell got bit by a dog. I didn't see it but apparently this dog just ran up to him and bit him on the arm...WTF?!? I hope that he bit it back.
In other news, after the whole Brad Lewis cardiac arrest thing I went in and had a stress test. I wasn't worried about my heart or anything, but then again I've never had it checked out so I figured that I should. Long story short, the doc says I'm fine for racing but I do have high blood pressure (already knew that) and an Atrial Septal Aneurysm (ASA--didn't know that). This isn't like a brain aneurysm he quickly explained as my eyebrows flew for the ceiling. I couldn't help it, somebody tells you that you've got an aneurysm and it doesn't sound good, right?
Anyway I asked a few more questions about what causes it, what I can/should do about it etc. It's congenital (thanks mom and dad), and while it is a risk factor for embolic strokes, I am healthy enough in pretty much all other departments that the doc is totally not worried. If he isn't worried then I'm not worried. Doc said that even a daily aspirin would probably be too severe a treatment, he just suggested I try to work on lowering my blood pressure. As for the blood pressure, I'm working on it.
Sleet fell from the sky, dogs attacked Rob, shit hit the fan.
That race was hard. Very, very, hard. It was raining before the race started and it never really stopped. Well unless you count when it turned to sleet and then snow. It definitely wasn't raining while it was snowing but those are some pretty fine hairs to split. Ten minutes into the race I couldn't really feel my fingers or toes and by the end my manual dexterity was pretty abysmal. I could barely pull the breaks, I couldn't squeeze my bottle, I didn't even try to open a cliff bar and eat, and shifting gears consisted of taking the frozen lump of ice on the end of my wrist and swinging it at my levers in a somewhat controlled manner. As a result upshifting when I meant to downshift and vice versa happened several times.
There was a break early on that got a couple of minutes or more on the field which was making me very nervous, especially in the middle when everyone seemed pretty content to just roll along at a fairly unaggressive clip. At one point I tried attacking and got a little gap on the field when one of the flaggers at an intersection was yelling at me. All that I heard was "blah blah blah left. Blah blah blah left." So I turned left. Turns out that was wrong. Probably for the best anyway as I didn't have much of a gap and they didn't seem to want to let me open it up. None the less I was pissed. I managed to make it over the first few hills in the top ten of the main group. As I write it staying up front over the hills sounds like a good idea--seems easy enough, but man did it suck. I nearly cracked going up every single one of those. That being said, I didn't crack and was even the one pushing the pace a couple of times. At least I was until Ian Mckissick, Andy Fischer, Sam Johnson, or Tom Peterson would cruise by and really put the hurt on.
Damn them.
When the last big climb rolled up I started up front but was getting the hurt put on and ended up on the wheel of someone who was dropping fast. I passed him and tried to keep pace with the leaders but as we crested the top and started into the nasty rollers along the top I was about 20 meters back and it took for frickin ever to get back on. I did make it back on and after a short breather felt pretty strong again. Over the rollers and into the descent there were a bunch of small attacks a couple of which I was in, but none stuck until with two or three miles to go Ian Mckissick attacked and floated around 100-200 meters off the front for a while. I thought about trying to bridge but would have just pulled everyone up with me. I was somewhat surprised that Broadmark (who had 3 of the 14 riders in the group) didn't set up a chase. Someone pointed out to me later that the Broadmark riders in the lead group weren't really local and may not have known that Ian can hold a gap like that and won't just die if you don't chase him hard. As we rolled through 500 meters to go I was sitting on Kenny's wheel in good position in the pack. Kenny realized he was in shitty position and slowed up/pulled off. Being the idiot that I am I said "dum-dee-dum, better start my sprint WAY TOO FRICKIN SOON!" So I did. Needless to say a got passed by a lot of people starting 50-100 meters from the line. Moron. One of these days I will learn that lesson, but in the meantime the competition is going to keep beating it into my skull until I get it.
So I totally biffed the sprint, but I'm happy I made the lead group (well, technically, the second group given that Ian won off the front).
Oh yea, as the first line indicates Rob Campbell got bit by a dog. I didn't see it but apparently this dog just ran up to him and bit him on the arm...WTF?!? I hope that he bit it back.
In other news, after the whole Brad Lewis cardiac arrest thing I went in and had a stress test. I wasn't worried about my heart or anything, but then again I've never had it checked out so I figured that I should. Long story short, the doc says I'm fine for racing but I do have high blood pressure (already knew that) and an Atrial Septal Aneurysm (ASA--didn't know that). This isn't like a brain aneurysm he quickly explained as my eyebrows flew for the ceiling. I couldn't help it, somebody tells you that you've got an aneurysm and it doesn't sound good, right?
Anyway I asked a few more questions about what causes it, what I can/should do about it etc. It's congenital (thanks mom and dad), and while it is a risk factor for embolic strokes, I am healthy enough in pretty much all other departments that the doc is totally not worried. If he isn't worried then I'm not worried. Doc said that even a daily aspirin would probably be too severe a treatment, he just suggested I try to work on lowering my blood pressure. As for the blood pressure, I'm working on it.
posted by Jamie Stangeland at Tuesday, April 18, 2006
2 Comments:
OK, everybody, make sure you give Jamie salt-free goodies for his upcoming birthday so his blood pressure doesn't get out of hand. Chocolate doesn't have salt, does it? :)
Rob didn't bite the dog but he chucked a pretty big rock at it.
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