I’ve got some free time between races right now over here at the Gate City Grind in Pocatello, Idaho. This morning was a road race in a strangely familiar place. My olfactory senses finally triggered my memory when I smelled human feces. Before I moved to La Grande, I also interviewed here and one of the houses the realtor showed us happened to be on the circuit we were racing. Apparently, they hadn’t gotten the septic problem fixed yet either. I wonder if I would have gotten into bike racing if I had moved here instead of La Grande?
The road race this morning was on a pretty benign course but riders kept attacking the whole race. My legs felt lifeless. Perhaps they didn’t like the 140 mile loop Rad Doc and I did Thursday. It only had 11,000 feet of elevation gain. I offered to do a less demanding ride but Rad insisted it would be good physical therapy for his freshly broken collar bone from his Elkhorn crash.
So in today’s race I just kept waiting and hoping my legs would magically come around. In the feed zone before the final lap, I got boxed out and missed a neutral bottle that I desperately needed. Fortunately Brandon, a racing acquaintance of mine, cruised by me a couple kilometers later and handed me a full bottle. I’m forever indebted because it saved my life, and my race.
Not far down the road we were on our 5th and final lap and just about to catch the 2 breakaway riders. For some reason, I attacked. We ended up with a break of 5 and a good gap on the field. It was great because we had Motor Bike Matt from Team Bob’s. It also sucked for me that we had Motor Bike. On every pull he was putting me into deficit and by the time I figured out I needed to sit out a couple pulls, he was up front again and I blew up.
Then my attention turned to recovery. I was able to tack on with a kid trying to bridge up and eventually was able to get some pulls in and for awhile I though we were coming up to the break. Then, Jittery Matt pulled his chase group into us, which was a good thing. I was able to sit in this group to the finish which was very difficult because of all the attacking. By the time we got to the finish I was feeling okay and was in a good position for a sprint for 5th place. When I stood at 200 meters my legs said “no.” Ninth place on the day.
I’m looking forward to seeing how I will do in the time trial this evening. I’m NOT looking forward to the crit tomorrow but maybe I’ll muster up enough motivation to actually race it. By the way, the Pro1-2 crit at Elkhorn was my favorite crit ever.
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