I missed the stage of the Tour this morning on account of some pesky bike racing that had to be done. Its on at 9 again so I'm trying to stay off the web in case I get an accidental sneak peek at the results.
I just finished up the final stage of the Tour De Delta a couple hours ago. It honestly wasn't very eventful. Its funny how a 3km Prologue can effect the standings of a major race so much.
Its also a big pain in the ass to warm up for over an hour for 4 minutes of racing. I didn't have my TT bike or anything aero really as it went back with momma from Quebec. It saved me about $100 so being a little bit slower is no big deal. For the 3km I placed 55th of 95 doing it old school. About 23 seconds away from Mr. Tuft, current Canadian National Champ. It gets you thinking of how little things add seconds. I'm a big fan of just pedalling harder and not worrying about the things of that sort, but if something like water bottle cages costs you a couple seconds in a TT...its gets you thinking.
Anyway. So the next day was the the crit. Man, I hate crits. I know with bike racing as in life, if you think you suck at something than you are most likely to hate it. But man I both suck and hate crits. So the Tour de Delta's Crit was a crash fest. It was pretty crazy. It wasn't that there was a ton of crashes, which there wasn't. The crashes were all of substance though, causing much pain and taking many guys down. Its hard on the nerves.
1 hour of sprinting essentially. A lot of the Pro Yankee teams are here so it makes the racing much faster as well. The craziest part of the race for me was when about 10 guys slid out in a corner. One Kona-Adobi guy leaned on me and I gripped my bars as hard as I could not to go down. In front of me there were wheels all over the place and some how....for some reason I kept it upright and the wheels miraculously cleared out in front of me the split second I rode in that spot.
'Holy Shit' I thought to myself wondering what the hell just happened. It was then I looked behind me for a split second and saw another Kona-Adobi guy jump up on the sidewalk/curb trying to avoid the crash and plowed into some old lady going about 45km/h. It was insane.
Its funny because you are kinda in shock when stuff like that happens, but you cant really stop to think about it because if you stop sprinting for a couple seconds your off the back of the pack. So as soon it it happened...Bam sprint sprint sprint.
The road race was also un-eventful. 140km around Delta, then heading to another town. Basically the pack just stayed together. Symmetrics and Jittery Joes controlled everything. there was a lot of climbing toward the end of the race so I tried to stay up front to get into a break which I thought would form, but nothing did.
The last lap was insane insane fast. We had a crazy downhill going back into town and coming into the second-last turn I braked before the turn then tried to shift down to sprint out of it when I realized I was already in my 53-12.(hardest gear). Spinning a gear like that points to about 60-70km/h.
So the race came down to a pack sprint which I stayed the hell away from, and just finished with the pack. So yeah, two pack finishes...two pack times... 3km TT defines the race.
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