Thursday, June 21, 2007

stage 4.

A few notes.
- The pinnacle of the tour of ohio - going to 80's night tonight will not happen due to the fact that we are exhausted.
- minturn lent me his ksyriums tonight and they are really fast. I have never ridden a pair. A lot faster than the rolf vector comps
- I painted some dude's ceiling today for 10 dollars at 9am. That is as much as minturn made for a 3 hour race Tuesday
- I told Heckman that Danny Chew asks me after each race that I do if he was there. He beat chew at calvins a few years ago
- Stage races with no pros are pretty sweet. Its not super insane and winning isnt totally out of the question.

Speaking of questions, last night I checked in with the ladylove and described the course to her. I told her that there were 5 KOM's to really emphasize how hard it was. Her response: "how many did you get?"... Im glad that this bike racing thing is the only way that she sets the bar high for me.

So tonight was a 1.2 mile crit, 40 miles, fast and turning with a pretty brutal hill each lap. It was a rad course. It was all residential, and the mayor of the town spoke beforehand. The streets were closed and lined with people watching and cheering. I could smell hamburgers the whole time. It wasnt a brutally fast race, it wasnt terribly hard. With that course it could have been insane, the hill was long and steady. A and F basically didnt let anything go. Good plan, get Heckman the V and the Jersey and the time bonus. They did all pretty easily and successfully.

4 days of racing and I have seen the wind 2 times. Yesterday I attacked through the feedzone to try and bridge up to the break. It was a decent roller and I totally committed. I turned around the only pro in the race chased me down. I wasnt bummed, and was actually kind of honored that a pro deemed some squid cat 2 worth of wasting energy on.
The other wind seeing was tonight when the yellow jersey (dickey dewey) and Heckman were both in a move that had about 10 seconds. I bridged it on the hill, of course only to have the field come up like 3 seconds later. I was ready for a counter attack for sure, but nothing really came.

The rear tubular from the other day is FLAT. That is 3 tubies flatted this year in races. This leaves two options: Ride tufo's that I have had tons of luck with, but they ride like garden hoses. Or deal with flatting vitoria tubulars every other race (kirkwood, no flat. mingo flat, monday tour of ohio no flat, tuesday tour of ohio flat) AWESOME!

Dear Steevo of 2 years ago:
Please follow the advice of the people that you talked to and dont spend money on tubulars. Yes they look cool, yes it is lighter and faster, but is it REALLY worth it in the long run? is it? is it? PS, quit your job now, a brick is going to fall on your head in a few months!

Tomorrow is a circuit race in Yellow Springs. Antioch is closing this year, so it will be neat to see it for the last time. Maybe it will reopen. Maybe I will get a contact high from all the hippies drowning in their sorrows.
Awesome

2 comments:

Chris Mayhew said...

Dude, you're like mid-pack on the 7th place GC. You're getting beat by a he/she and Bad Andy. That said, I totally think you can beat Weller for top 7th.

You are top MG-GPOA'er. Cool.

http://truesport.com/Bike/2007/Q2/results/tourofohio.html

Anonymous said...

So I'm at work and I decided to be a little more efficient today, so I printed out the last 3 posts to read for my afternoon dump.

It was great,... perfect,.. just enough drama to get things moving, enough content to get me through to the end and not too much that I had to linger around suspiciously. GO Steevo!