In the Suitcase

(Black Helmet)
Its only 11am and I'm already an hour behind schedule. Today is packing day as I leave for the Isle of the Red Dirt tomorrow. Honestly I cant wait. SuperWeek went decent for my first one, but was some hard hard hard racing. Nothing I couldn't seem to handle, but it was definitely hard on both the mind and the body.

The worst part about stage racing is that you mind can never get a break. Your constantly thinking about the race. Over 10 days it wears on you. Stage racing also takes place at odd hours. For 3 days you'll race Crits at 8-9:30pm, then drive home...arrive at 10:30, eat a big meal for the race the next day. Then you go to sleep around 11pm, but have to get up at 5am for a race at 8am.

The thing about racing Crits so late is that I find it super hard to sleep afterword. I'm so jacked from the adrenaline that I just roll around in bed all night. Everything is quiet and your trying so hard to fall asleep because you have to recover and get up the next day at 5, but you can hear your heart pumping like a madman in your ears. Its pretty annoying.

The Tour de White Rock Crit went well. Its was a 60km Crit with a 400m climb in the middle of each lap. This means we basically climbed the hill 60 times at 50km/h. After awhile it wears on you. I was pretty impressed with my Crit riding. I was up at the front and held my own, and stayed out of trouble. No crashes and finished 33rd. About half the pack didn't finish.

That night we got home late again and I couldn't sleep. I went into the White Rock road race the next day knowing I didn't recover very well. I was told it was going to be one of the hardest races all year with 2 climbs per lap of different grades and world class field.



Right off the gun on the first lap the pack split in 2. I was far back and caught myself in the second group. I kind of panicked and went up front to help to pull it back. I burned way too many matches during that time, but the front group ended up re-grouping.

So the race went on. Lap after lap guys fell off the back and because I knew I want climbing strong my priorities shifted into just conserving and staying efficient. The heat picked up too and it became a race of attrition for the 140km.

Honestly that race was the only race I sincerely wanted to DNF all year. I was hurting so bad. It was like racing with the worst hang over. To make matters worse the feedzone was in the hardest part of the climb so it made getting water tricky because guys would always attack at that spot. If you missed the split you were off the back.

So I just grinned and tried to hang on. Its tough staying in a race where you feel like shit and you know your not riding like yourself and guys are constantly just pulling oer to the side and stopping. Its so easy. In 1 second you can go from being in extreme pain to having a nice cold bottle of water..sit in the grass..chill out. Its that easy. The problem with that is it becomes a cycle of dropping out.

Anyway, so with about 30km to go Chris Horner(15th at Tour de France 07), Matt Shriver from JJ and a Symmetrics guy attacked like crazy. I saw them go and I was about 15 back. I dug as deep as I could go....but I just didn't have the juice. Simple as that. It was that state that most cyclists know where you are pedalling hard as you can go...100% with more pain you can handle...and you just cant give anymore.

From then I was in the second group and we basically did a chase but didn't make up any ground. We rode the last 20km pretty conservatively and that was that.

In the final finishing loops(4km, we had about 6 of them) Chris Horner went on a break and lapped us(Only a 4km loop). I was giving it everything I had in my 39x21 up the final 600m climb and he passed me in the big ring. It was pretty crazy.

So anyway, I rolled in 22nd. Only 35 guys finished of 120 or so, so I'm glad I hung in there. Its funny how after the race you always think about going harder when the breaking moment goes. Next Time.