I was really happy MSGP worked into my training schedule perfectly this year. With 3 weeks till Joe Martins I was feeling awesome and had really good fitness. I went out with Dustin and Brian and a few other riders to ride some hills wednesday for a few hours. Afterwards we stopped and Dustin and I got some kicking weeeeeee-doggy margaritas.
That night I was shavin away at the pistons, and upon standing I felt something tweak in my knee.. Oooh crap. Maybe it'll go away by tomorrow - not. I started taking Advil and icing the crap out of it, and putting all sorts of cream and stuff on it. It started feeling a little better by friday so I figured by Saturday i'd be go for the race. Me Dustin adn Randy drove up to the race and went and drove the course. The road race was way on the short side at like 58 or somethin miles. We picked out a spot to absolutely fly up and attack together, which was only about 20 miles into the race, so everyone would be fresh, so we'd really have to go go go. Me and Dustin were guaranteed to be marked riders seeing how Dustins been racing lately. We figured if we could put time into the field on our strong point, then we could take overall easy.
We eat at quiznos or something liek that and go get ready for bed. I stayed up a little late and wrapped Brians handlebars then go into the pitch black room where Randy and Dustin are sleeping with 2 full beds. I told them i'd sleep on the floor and dustin goes "dude just sleep in the damn bed" so i hopped in next to my sweet dustin. i'm kinda hangin off the bed and next thing I know I feel a leg come and flank my backside. "Dude dustin are you kidding me?" no response. so i eventually dozed off with dustin straddling me, only to have him deny it the next morning. web of lies...
My knee still hurt in the morning so I decided not to race. I was super bummed. A cool course, nice weather, nice payout, and would be sweet to show off some good fitness. I hate just being a specator at a race. First off I hate explaining to people why i'm not racing, which turns out to usually sound like a sob story pity party, and 2, who likes to watch other people go deep into the pain cave while you stand on the side of the road and watch.
Well as it turned out, the race ended in typical cat4 fashion with no break staying away and a couple big guys sprinting away up the hill. The guy that won the road race ended up 2nd in the time trial. That put his lead at like 40seconds or something. Seeing how strong he was he probably wasn't gonna lose it in the crit the next morning. Which he didn't. He actually even went out on the attack and opened up a 30sec gap only to be chased down by the fast and furious Daniel Leboeuf. Anyways, they got caught and it was just attack after another. It was really funny sitting over on the side with Ben Schuller and laughing at the tactics: people trying to bridge up to riders that had about a 20meter gap, people chasing down teammates. Our boys sat in with the exception of Daniel, while all that nonsense was going on and led Bennie out for the sprint. Bennie hit the patch of gravel on the left side of the road and slipped like hell and still ended up 4th. He was pissed, and rightly so. If you've ever seen Bennie sprint, which I haven't before this, you know he'd hand it down to the cat1,2 sprinters. He was a cat1 on the track though, and has legs the size of bloody oak trees. His brother won the cat5 crit that morning, and is about twice the size of Bennie. It was hilarious. His brother didn't do the road race or the time trial, drove in at 3am, won the crit, and got enough points for the cat5 omnium to put him into 3rd place.
I didn't get to stay and watch the 1,2,3's like I wanted, but I got to watch plenty of racing this weekend. I don't think the boys were too happy about the weekend, but we'll have some more chances.
I took a week off and my knees felt better, went on a 4 hour ride, and now they hurt. So i'm trying everything from cleat adjustment to saddle adjustment. Not good!
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