Racing Rapides

I got to race back to back weekens which was fun. I did Racing Rapides Omnium in Alexandria and the District Road Race Championships which are both on the LAMBRA calendar.

For Rapides we drove up the night before. Got some terrible service at Caribos or something.. Some "country italian" restaurant.. Sounds like a bad idea? Definately. I got a new Jamis TT bike 2 weeks before but it only decided to show up the day I left, so I did what I could to get it all together, which completely didn't happen. That left me with a quite a bit of work to do once I got to the hotel. When we finally got there around 9:30, I still had to finish putting together the bike, ride on the trainer, and shaaave?! God crap it. I don't think I have it in me to show up at a race with lairy hegs, and i'm glad I didn't. It was bloody hot. I think temp said 98, so heat index had to be over 100. I finally got to bed around midnight, woke up at 5 and drove out with everyone to the TT. I spent another 2.5 hours waiting for equipment to show up with cary, mom and leah, and trying to get my bike set up. Well when it came down to it, right when I got my shoes on Whitney comes haulin ass over to me telling me i'm up. I couldn't believe I didn't get any warm-up, so I was already dooming myself for failure. I got to the start line and Dustin was already taking off down the road so I had to get in there with 15seconds left and go go gooooooooo! I road at a good 70% of maximum figuring i'd ramp it up near the end if I felt better. Well I came around the corner and there was the finish line. So I shrugged off the time trial as pointless and looked forward to helping Dustin get as many points in the RR as he could.. In the end I got 4th in the time trial, which was kind of.. extremely surprising

The race was pretty typical. Attack after attack and no one wanting to let a break get away. I really can't stand to win a race in a pack sprint. It requires a lot of chance and sometimes you have to completely turn you brain off and do something completely retarded in order to win. I would rather get dead last from blowing up from an attack, then sprint for the win with the pack. So that's what I did sort of. I attacked, and attacked again. I would get these really big gaps attacking up hill then it'd go screaming downhill and it'd seem to lose a lot of my advantage. In the end, it came down to a sprint and our guys set up Dustin pretty nicely. Dustin goes blasting by everybody and it was a photo finish between him and Michael Pincus. Upon looking at the picture, Pincus was completely stretched out in a lunge, and Dustin was all tucked back like he was trying to touch his chest to the bars or something. Unbelievable?! It came down to less than 2 inches and Dustin didn't lunge. Dustin has got to be the most consistent finisher in a road race that I know and it killed me to see him lose by that much. Dustin was pretty happy with the result though and we were looking forward to working for Joe in the crit the next morning. Unfortunately Joe was involved in a nasty crash in the last 5 miles of the race. He came to the finish in a track with blood dripping everywhere, and had to get a lot of medical attention and stitches to his face. Well to the surprise of everyone Joe decided to race the next day. Bloody hell?!

The crit was pretty slow, but my legs didn't feel like it was at all.. I totally neglected to eat before the race and was running on empty. I attacked a couple times to take the pressure off the team and chased a few attacks down, then I was pretty much shelled. In the end, Joe got an unbelievable 2nd and Pincus won, sealing his overall victory. Anyways, awesome work by Joe who went directly to the MED after to get new bandages. That's a guy you want to have on your team