Crispy......

Well, after a fairly easy day Friday I started off the weekend with a nice little 75 mile ride up to Conifer and around the hills of Evergreen with Chris. We hit High Grade pretty hard, then did some climbs off of N. Turkey Creek. The weather was cold with some intermittent snow showers, nothing to make the roads messy, but enough to remind us that it was still winter.

Sunday was funday. The first race of the year! I lined up in the 3/4/5's race which was a full 75 peep field. Things started off fast, or at least it seemed that way. I didn't really have much of a warm up so that could have contributed to the early on suffering. I was rolling the new wheels, and man its nice to be on something other than the bomber training wheels. A couple laps in I got caught in the seam between the edge of the asphalt and the gutter. Luckily it was my rear wheel, and not the front. I held it up, but the dude lapping my rear wheel took the brunt of my unintentional change in lines and bounced off the deck. I think he was ok, and just pissed. Not to be callus, but that's racing bro, those things happen, and I've been on the receiving end of that short stick before. Which brings me to reminder No. 1 for the day. DONT OVER-LAP WHEELS! The race went on with the occasional attack, and bring back. (3's chase everything down, even their own teammates most times) Finally the race began with the ref. giving the 8 to go signal. Seemed the pace picked up and the position jockeying began. I was sitting back pack to tail gun most of the day, racing like I didn't have fitness, conserving my energy. I started to think about moving up at this point and with 5 to go it was time to get up front. This was a good course to tail gun where there were no real corners to cause the accordion effect, and resultant sprints every lap. It took me 2 laps to get up to the front and I was finally sitting 5th wheel. Perfect position for the sprint. 3 to go and the guys up front kept the pace high, then with two to go it happened! Negative Racing!!!!!!!! first and second wheel stopped pulling all together, I swear just stopped, sat up, no, I got blocked in from the resultant surge from both sides. Spent the rest of lap 2, and last lap fighting to get back into position, only to get back to 12-15th or so. That's racing! It was nice to get the competitive juices flowing again.

Race 2 of the day P/1/2/3.......
This leads me to Lesson No. 2 on the day. Always check your gearing before the start of your race!!!!! I spent the first 2.5 laps of the race spinning my 39-12/11 trying to hang on the tail of the group. I couldn't figure out why my legs felt so dead.... I had Teton on my wheel yelling to me to quit opening gaps, and was just straight up suffering. Once I figured out what was happening, and finally got into my 53, I was toast, kaput! I rolled off after 4 laps of high cadence work and went with McDiggler to go climb Flagstaff. Apparently I didn't switch my gearing after my first race, and in the haste of getting my number switched, forgot to check. I needed that reminder.

Good times!!!!