I just want to prove that I know how to ride a bike.

Yeah so Saturday and Sunday our team did well. About as well as you could hope for. I am still getting used to so many tactics and whatnot. I wish races were all attrition on brutal climbs. Even if I wasnt in the lead group, I would know that I gave my all instead of wondering why I wasnt in the lead group. Whatever. - that was my story saturday.

Sunday, well, the guys did well against a SUPER stacked field. Im going to say this was about as hard as a field could get in Pittsburgh without Murrysville around anymore. I crashed out after hitting a cone. Yeah a cone that had been there the previous 12 laps. The weird thing is, it was supposed to be the right hand border, and I think Billet was on my right when I hit it. I felt like such a retard.

Proof that I can ride a bike! Steevo circa 1998

Do you want a pull?

Old story, few weeks old anyway, but I forgot about it. Mike and I were meeting Jared and Ben up the hill for food one night. Jared and Ben in a car, Me and Mike
climbing up wilkins ave. Jared goes by slowly enough that I can grab on and skitch
a ride up the hill. Mike was too far back and missed out.

Wel or did he? It turns out this 70ish year old woman wound down her window and said "do you want a pull?" and let Stubna skitch off of her until she floored it and he let go. Think of how many people are going to be super confused when they are riding up a hill and this old lady asks if they want a pull! She said she had never done that before. haha.

Pack fodder

Well I was going to write something about Turkey Hill and how awesome it was having
the team do so well. Then I thought about when I was a strong cat 3 and would read other's blogs. I would be like "who wants to read about a dude sitting in the field and missing all the moves." So I figured I would spare the world a write up of me getting 41st or something.

Bear Mountain: Same story. I do owe the world a public apology for having the noiseiest bottom bracket on earth for 4.5 hours. I bet everybody was pissed that I didn't get shelled during that race cause it was one of the few things that would drown out Danny Chew's voice on a 100 mile ride. I did finish a 98 mile road race, which is really really far.

On lap 5, Scotty Z went 28mph up the climb. For real.
Last lap I was hurting to pass a guy on a hybrid who was just cruising around the park, look out, Im a monster. Sorry about the bottom bracket

Ephrata.

Logistic nightmare:
Jared's car holds 3 bikes. His TT bike, road bike and Stubna's road bike. Dougie's car takes 3 but only has 2 trays. This leaves me borrowing Kralldiggle's tray, taking my bike and said tray to Dougie's house and hoping I can find him Saturday before the race to get it and warm up and race it, then I also have to get to Jared's girlfriend's house (about a 15 minute bike ride from mine), at 545 Saturday am to catch the ride, but don't have my bike to ride over there.
Well it all worked out and I got a sweet warmup on my Huffy 3 speed. I warned Stubna that I would put it into 3. Oh did I ever.
4 dudes, 3 bikes, 4 sets of spare wheels, and enough gear to really get bad gas mileage I am sure.
The race Saturday:
65 and Sunny, not too windy and very nice roads. It was so sunny out that when the beautiful course took us through the covered bridge I thought we should have to remove our sunglasses! The race started out pretty fast, and there was the longest move of the day with Geronimo, Ramon B and a few others. I really thought that it might stick, but it came back. I was just in the pack, going here and there, but nothing serious or long at all. I did catch a wheel up to Stubna's break and I had to scream at him cause the kid who gave me ride up there was just going to blow past them. I was like "MIKE!!!" cause I didn't want him to miss us. But of course that got caught too. Leech managed to get into a break and got 2nd int he downhill sprint. He was stoked and it was awesome. Jared got 8thish I think. I didn't realize until too late that I wasn't close enough to the front to help with any leadout attempts, and when I did, it was too late. Next time. That last lap was mad fast.

Hotel, Swimming Pool, Hot Tub, Cable, Decaf coffee in the room. Man was that nice. Then we hit up the olive garden for dinner cause we were in strip mall hell and there was nothing else. Of course we were starving so the hostess girl had to skip my name and make us wait like 20 minutes longer. Not sweet. Jared used to sales skills to get us free dessert! oh yes! oh yeah! blackberry/blueberry tart. boom!

Sunday brought panacke buffet for breakfast. I hate buffets cause I usually eat until I am sick. I really tried to refrain and only overate a bit. I am proud of myself, but kind of mad in retrospect knowing I could have eaten twice as much, which would have made the meal cost 1/2 as much, or twice as much for the same price.... whatever.

Pain Mountain TT.
Nice roads to warmup on. I just had aero bars on a road bike. Jared was right, I think a TT bike would have been faster for sure. I had about a 25 minute warmup, which probably wasn't enough. The course was pretty gnarly. My 30 second guy was fast so I just paced off of him most of the time it was too twisty to see him though. My 1 minute down guy was a Rite Aid Pro rider on a full TT bike, so I was waiting for him to come around me after 1:20 or so. Pain mountain was a freaking staircase up a ridge. It didn't fool around with switchbacks or mellow grades, it just went up and over. There was a 1K to go sign like 4 miles from the finish that was just cruel and unusual punishment. My 1 minute guy caught me towards the end, but I was proud that I held him off for so long. Not a bad ride I don't think. I could have done better of course, and with experience my next time will be better.

Crit.
Brutally fast. First lap I was coming out of the last turn and I heard the announcer saying who was already crossing the line. Man I was far back. I was pretty stoked when Jared got in the move and Geronimo got up to it too. The rest of the day was basically just covering attacks and not pulling through when a chase attempt was finally made. They pulled the field after having us sprint early cause we were about to get lapped. It was sweet to watch the finish with geronimo coming up for 1 and hearing the announcer say "Meredith - GPOA does the 1, 2" . sweet. Then we waited for the results. and waited. and waited and waited and ate chinese food and waited until 730 when we got on the road for our 4 hour trip home.

I thought I was tired in the car, but when I got on my huffy 3 speed for ride back from rob's house was when the legs really told me to stop riding for the day. Hacker is just lucky I didn't have that bad boy for the Pain Mountain TT or I would have put some time into him.