Saturday recap

The day started out well. Woke up, had some tea and breakfast, got ready, watched a little bit of the vuelta. We packed up the truck and started to head out to the race. But as I was driving out of our parking lot I realized I ran over something. Turns out it was my front wheel. Whoops. I had taken it off and leaned it against the truck, and forgot to put it in the truck. It now had no axle as I had managed to shear off one side of said axle.

Luckily, I had my old shimano front wheel upstairs, and it even had an unused tire and tube on it. So I threw that in the truck, and Carrie and I headed out.

Got warmed up, and the race started. I unfortunately lined up in the back, but I was able to quickly move up to around the middle. We started at the bottom of the corkscrew, and I kid you not, somebody crashed going up the corkscrew less than 30 seconds into the race. In fact, there were so many crashes in this race, it was hard to count. I had to pull a cyclocross move and go offroad for a bit because a crash pushed everybody to both sides of the course. It was sort of nutty.

But I survived with a pack finish. In all honesty, the race wasn’t that hard. I probably should have used more energy to get myself up closer to the front in the last few laps. I was a little hesitant to be up near the very front because I wasn’t sure how I’d handle the two over 90 degree turns at a faster speed. I usually went through that part of the course near the back, so I could see where I needed to be, and we were going much more slowly. 

Oh well, the next two days are much more classic crit courses. Flat with 90 degree turns. Should be fast races as there won’t be any course features slowing things down like today. So with my less than stellar time trial, and today’s pack finish I have yet to accomplish either of my two goals. However, there are two races left and I am confident I have the legs to reach my goals. And hopefully I won’t run over any more bike components! ;)

Time for sleep!