Lincoln Plating 07

I first did this race two years ago and found it a really well run and fun race. I was eager to not attend the AST crit so I decided to head out to Lincoln, Nebraska for a quick weekend race. The drive wasn't all that bad either way minus some EPIC winds on the way home. I thought for sure we were going off the road a few times.

The TT was what it should be, hard. Scott Tietzel had a really good ride in 4th with Ross and I a bit off the pace. After a fast trip back to the hotel for a shower and a bite to eat we were back out at the race site for the road race. It followed the trend of RR's this year and was shortened due to high winds and slow times. The first attack detonated and came back without anyone chasing. The next break had HART strongman Wes Hartman in it so we had to chase with a few other guys. After a lap and a half of chasing it was back together again with everyone looking a bit ragged already. The 30-50mph gusts were pretty draining. Dan Porter was dangling off the front of the group so I bridged up him and it looked like the field was letting us go. Unfortunately, on the next cross wind stretch the other big HART strongman Randy Reichardt bridged across to us. I was pretty bummed not to see Tietzel on his wheel. Because of Randy place behind Scott in the TT and the fact I was pretty cooked after the long chase I decided to sit on and let the HART teammates ride Randy into the leaders jersey if they could.

They did just that AND had me on the ropes a couple of times along the way. I managed to attack and shed Porter a few Km from the finish. The downside of that was that I had tow Randy to the line or risk getting 3rd if Porter caught back on. The move gave Randy the stage win and moved the 3 of us into the top 3 on GC. That's the way it stayed through the next days rather moist circuit race. Scott and Ross respectively ended up 7th and 19th

A big thanks goes out to race promoter John Lefler and sponsor Lincoln Plating. John's dedication to the sport is impressive and he puts on a GREAT event. It would be nice if all the people who complain about the office park crit problem in Colorado (specifically AST) would skip those in favor of races like Lincoln plating. We left at noon on Friday and got back @10 on Sunday. The trip was well worth the time and money for a such an action packed event.

March/April

After the epic Cateye road race a week of good training brought the Koppenberg Circuit. This race has always been fairly straight forward, follow the strong guys as long as you can. I did just that and not much more, ending up at the back of the lead group. Not-so-Mini-Phinney made one heck of an impression on me there, that kid appears to have ALL the goods to make it big in bike racing if he wants to. It will be entertaining to watch his career unfold.

After a weather weekend off of racing Beth and I headed to Texas for some family functions, including my nephew's birthday. I managed to race EARLY the next morning but was feeling the 3+ hrs I had spent in the jumpy castle the day before. It was an experience I haven't had in a while, I was there solo and there were several large teams present. Just like CO those teams just kept attacking until an acceptable group got off. I missed that group so decided to sit, chill and see what I could do at the end. The break had 2:30 at the start of the last climbing stretch. I tried to bridge across and got within 30 seconds before hitting a long headwind stretch that ended my attempt. A few guys came up to me and we road together until the finish. The racing scene seemed very similar to Colorado, although it was nice not to have a sizable portion of the pro peleton on hand to dose out pain.

Next up was quick weekend trip to Nebraska to avoid the dreaded AST crit.

Cateye RR- Good Idea??

Was doing the road race yesterday a good idea? Let's see...

Was it good for my bike? Probably not the best. I even used heavy duty motorcycle chain lube before I left.



The Garden Gnome Seems to think it was good, he got a rare ride on my dirty steed. I'm pretty sure he was the voice who kept telling me to ride out and race everytime I looked out the window that Saturday morning.



My sweet wife prewashed my clothes in her bath water as soon as I got home. I had already done a quick rinse of everything in the drainage ditch next to the car before tossing into a dirty wet pile in my bag at the race.



Peek a Boo, I don't really see you! This was taken 3 hrs after we finished when I finally was able to get in the shower after cleaning everything else up. It's the next monring and things are still a bit blurry. My glasses served an ornamental, not functional purpose today.

Baker was on another level today. He smoked what was left of the field by 5 minutes, solo from the second of 6 laps.


All in all it was an epic race and good training when I would normally have just sat inside and taken a rest day.

Off and Running

The local scene is underway for the year. As usual, the first Stazio races were probably some of the hardest of the year with a stacked field duking it out to get ready for their spring NRC campaign. Those race have revealed some new faces to watch this season. The first is obviously Taylor Phinney. That guy had me on the ropes several times during the first Stazio race, and he's 16! His family seems to be pretty supportive in all the right ways as well. I see him going a long way this season. Next, I'd be willing to bet that Corey Carlson will begin to be someone to watch this season. The raced cross HARD and is right back out there again for the road season. It shows some love for the sport and that goes a long way to suffering through the school of hard knocks. Finally, you won't see much of him but Peter Horn could finally have the breakthrough year he's been working towards. Peter attends Vassar and spends his summer at the Cycling Center in Belgium. He'll be coming home from Europe for nationals this year and I think a lot of us will have our fingers crossed for him.

Also coming into form right now are the squirrels in our back yard. We've watched these guys do some long slow work all winter long. Over the past few weeks they have really stepped it up. You should see some of the tree to tree moves these guys are pulling off, it's EXTREME!! Besides the big air they have picked up some incredible speed. I'm seriously thinking something is up, their spaz level has gone from 3 to 10+ in the past few days alone. Right now the squirrels are really smashing the combined efforts of the neighborhood cats and deer for back yard dominance. I would love to see the panicked looks on their rabid faces if I brought in USADA to ensure that our back yard is a clean playing field.

VOS

Despite what others might say, I like Valley of the Sun. It's true, the traffic sucks, the courses aren't very interesting and it's a pretty long drive. But the race is usually very predictable and it's pretty easy to make it into a great training weekend. I got around 11hrs in between the afternoon we got there and the end of the crit. Not bad when it's just about the only stage race in the region during February. It is always a good measure of where you're at and where you need to go with your training. I was pleasantly surprised with my form. It looks like all those mornings on my skate skis payed off a little.

I've got some work to do to get down to race weight but I think I've got time for that. No real travel race this year so I've got until Lookout to shed some lbs.

One person who's on decent form is my wife. Dang, she's rolling and is just starting to get her training on track. She actually got a result at VOS (8th overall, 5th TT). That's pretty rare for a local CO person.

The local fun starts this weekend with a TT out by the old Buckeye RR course. I predict searing lung pain from the cold air. I'm hoping one of the guys who did the Tour of California shows up and shows how out of shape the local crew is now.

Yep

It's official, the combination of unusually bad weather and a new office is making me feel more and more like this guy every day.


His name is Goliath and he got stuck in a doggy door trying to steal some other cat's food. Read more about this larger than average kitty. I'm actually going to start riding inside to avoid continuing on my current ballooning trend.

Am I cut out for Colorado?

I'm pretty much done with winter. Our Christmas trip to Texas came and went way too fast. At this point I would give anything to head back to South Texas for a weekend. I would go somewhere to ride but my road bike has had a flat for about a month and I'm not too motivated to change it.

The one saving grace is skate skiing. I tried my first race over the weekend and it can be described in two words, REALY HARD. By far it was the hardest 20 minutes I've ever done. The good news is that I'm still pretty out of shape and am motivated to do quite a bit more racing this year. Here I am trying not fall down: