The race weekend brought us down to Crawfordsville, Indiana. On the way down mother nature treated us to high winds and white out conditions. Winds got up to around 60 mph and "The Mother" was definitely trying to destroy our bikes. On the way down we saw about 41 cars in ditches and 2 accidents. One side of my fork decided to rip out of the tray and flail all around...possibly destroying the fork (it needs to be looked at). The tray Darren's trek 5.2 was being held on split in half and his bike nearly flew off the car. Further inspection found a crack in his carbon frame...Mother Nature 1, Us 0.
It was only suppose to be a 5 hr car ride...it turned into 9 hrs. I hope this weather ends soon or I'm going to punch mother nature in the ovary. We got there at 11pm eastern time, unpacked and tuned up our bikes for Saturday.
Saturday:
Drive the course...find snow on the ground...find that race is postponed until 10...9am...ITT at 11:30 now.....9:30am...snow rolls in with whiteout conditions....Race cancelled.
We drove back to the hotel and relaxed a little bit. At noon a couple of us decided to go for a ride outside, while others stayed inside and rode trainers and rollers. I would rather be outside for 30min than inside a hotel riding rollers. Froze our feet and hands and never made it to the crit course to ride it a couple times. Came back and just slept.
6:30pm rolls around and its time to go to Applebee's. Fun times happened there. Lots of joking while watching more snow come down outside. A couple beers here and there, half a plate of Chicken Penne Alfredo and a brownie dessert later we're off to the hotel. We had a short little team meeting and then about 6 of us were off to the strip joint only 200 feet away from the hotel. We met up with 3 Mizzou guys there. We definitely did not get our hopes up for this place and thank god we didn't. We were in Indiana....can't expect much...mostly nothing actually. We had a couple beers, didn't really want to watch the women. Got back...there was a little bit of chaos and we went to sleep.
Sunday:
We got to the course and it was covered in snow. But the race was still going to happen. It was suppose to start at 9:30...but was postponed until 11am. 15 of our teammates left...and with my bike. I had no bike. Great. All the fields raced with time cut down. We didn't have any D's or C's riders. We won women's B's. Got 7th and 9th in Men's B's (close to that atleast). And women's A's we only had 1 rider, but I believe she finished middle of the pack.
Men's A time:
I used Spencer's six13 and Darren's keo pedals. The bike was a little small so I was a little twitchy, but it had to work. 60 min...they asked us if we wanted to drop the time down to 45 minutes. Lots of people wanted to. I was there to race and I paid to race. They already cut the time down by 15 minutes, I want my 60 minutes then. There were 4 of us that wanted 60 minutes (Dallas, Seth Meyer, Me, and I believe a Milwaukee guy). They kept it at 60 minutes. Awesome. 28 people started. They started the race and I had a really good start. I started 3rd wheel. But...the legs were not ready to go in that cold weather. So I went back a little bit to the middle of the pack. About 10 minutes in about 6 people and I went down in the corner that everyone was going down in all day. I'm ok. Free Lap. I enjoy free laps. I got back into the field and then people started going hard and the field was crashing and getting torn apart. All of a sudden I was in no man's land with an 8 man break away group, a 5 man chase group and then me, with a couple guys behind me. It was time for a little TT action from me. For about 30 minutes I chased and chased and chased. Dallas knew I was behind so he tried to slow down the group. I slowly kept moving up. I finally made it up, but Corey fell off after someone pushed him into a snowbank and wasn't able to clip in. So then I was in a group of 5. I just hung on the back and got some energy back. We tried to make our way up to the front group, but then they decided to make it hard so it never happened. 6 laps to go I get on the front and push harder. I made a mistake in the final corner again and went down hard. Dallas got dropped and then got lapped. Another guy went down with me. We crashed on the last lap that we could for a free lap. I got a little bit of road rash on my left thigh, banged my left wrist, left shoulder, right elbow and the right side of my neck. I also tore my shorts a little bit...damn it. I decided to roll in a bunch of mud and then get back on the bike. I got back in with an Indiana guy, dropped the guy that crashed with me and it was just two of us for 9th and 10th place. For 5 laps we took corners nice and easy and tried not to get lapped. We never got lapped and sprinted for the finish. I didn't have much left after TT'ing it for 30 minutes and crashing twice. But I finished and never got lapped and possibly got a top 10 finish. Just waiting for the results to be posted. 28 starters...11 finishers. WOW.
During the last 5 laps. I couldn't quite see out of my right eye....filled with mud.
Me after the race....spent....
Next weekend....Mizzou. Saturday Road Race and Sunday ITT. After my solo performance in the Crit I should be able to do pretty well in a 9 mile ITT.
Ciao ciao....
