Two More Wins!

It was a perfect weekend for bike racing. The weather was warm, but not hot, the wind was blowing, but not too hard, and it was sunny and beautiful. Fortunately, we were lucky to have a pair of races to do and I made the most of it. Saturday was the Avon road race. It was around 90 miles and all the local 1-2's showed up for battle, so we had a nice sized field. We started off slow and I was getting antsy. I was ready to start riding hard, but with such a long race I had to be patient. Terry Beneken and Eric Dahl eventually established a strong two-man move. They were gone. Andy M, Dano and I decided we needed to shut it down so we got to the front on the cross winds and drilled it, just like the race last weekend. We'd established a break of about 8 guys or so and were tearing the field to shreds. Then we got to a corner and I swear the marshall was pointing right, so we went right. But then someone realized we'd screwed up and we had to stop, turn around and go the other way. I was so mad, we'd done this huge effort and it amounted to nothing. I stopped to pee and Mean Dawg and AJ took me back to the field. The next lap was pretty uneventful. We went hard a few more times, dropping some guys and others got back on and we all got stopped by Matt Anderson, the official, because half the field was over the centerline. It's pretty much cheating to do that, like cutting the course. It happend everytime there is a strong wind from the right. People need to understand if we cross the centerline with reckless abandon someone could get hurt or we could lose our right to race there. Anyway, we got going again and on the last lap things hit the fan. A group got away on the descent of the one good climb on the circuit. We had Andy up there and were sitting pretty. Then the break came back and Flanders and GP were screwed because they didn't have anyone in the front group. So they had to chase and Dan and I were able to just sit on for a while. With about 10k to go we caught the leaders and it was game on. Dewey attacked and Aric and I went with him. We opened up a big gap and Spring Street had to chase. That was good because they are really tough sprinters. It was a flat finish and I was much better off sprinting with Aric than Metza, Johnson or Marcotte. So we drilled it into the last kilo. Then it was, to use the old saying, a game of cat and mouse. We sat up and looked at each other. Metza started coming up from the group. As soon as he caught us I jumped hard with about 800 meters to go. Aric started with me and I knew I couldn't take him to the line. I stopped sprinting with 200 meters to go and forced him to lead me out for about 50 meters before I jumped again to take the win. It was a hard fought ride out there and I was surprised and pleased to take the win that way.

That night I had to build up my TT bike. I'd just the position dialed in and had to string all the cables and adjust everything. It took forever but in the end I had a sweet TT bike ready to rock. So this morning we rolled over to St. Paul for the Lilydale TT. It's only about 5 miles so it's pretty much and all out effort for 10 minutes. I took off steady and ramped it up. The bike just went like crazy. Even though my legs were a little heavy I was still able to just sail. I ended up winning over Aric again by 3 seconds. Not bad for my first 5 miles on a TT bike ever. I think it's only the third time I've ever used aero bars! Now I'm pretty tired and excited to ride my TT bike some more and dial it in a little bit. It's fast now, but I don't think I could sit on it for an hour.

Other than that, sorry I don't have any pics or anything. I guess I should start taking a camera with me to the races so I have something a little more visual. Oh well, just think of this like an Old School Blog. Oh, and I guess I made the St. Cloud paper. Cool, check out that article here . It says I'm a full time roadie now, but that's not really true. I'm racing the Cable 0ff Road Classic on Saturday, and then doing the Alpine WORS race after that. Of course, I haven't ridden an MTB in 2 months, so this week I hit the dirt! I'll toss the camera in my jersey pocket for you folks who only look at the pictures...

Posted: Sun - May 7, 2006 at 03:22 PM