Happy New Year!  We did the 4.5 hour drive up to Nashville last Friday (new year’s day).  Took my family with me for a little get away.  It was nice.  We ate too much home cooking on Friday night at the Loveless Cafe.  It’s a downhome little place where the celebrities and us normal folks can all eat.  My wife saw it on the Food Channel and thought it would be cool.  It was pretty neat.  The food was good.  I wisely skipped dessert though.

Woke up Saturday morning to 15 degrees and snow flurries.  My family decided it was too cold for them, so I dropped them at the mall on my way to race.  The food from the night before caught up with me.  Had to make a pit stop.  By the time I got there, got registered, and changed and got the bike ready I had about 10 mins to get warmed up.  Did I mention it was cold?  Didn’t happen.  So, I hit the starting line woefully unprepared.  Didn’t even get a chance to preride the course.  Luckly (maybe) the start was down a long stretch of paved rode before it turned up into the fields.  I got a decent start, but my HR went through the roof.  There were 3 guys that took off for the lead.  I settled in with a group of 4 behind them and tried to catch my breath.  Then I had a problem.  My rear wheel went haywire.  I had noticed a slight problem before the start and tried to quickly fix it.  Thought it was ok, but not to be.  Had to run a little ways to get to the pit to switch.  I lost a little ground, but I keep on chugging.  I was actually starting to feel a little better.  I managed to pass a couple of guys back, but got stuck in no man’s land by myself.  I ended up in 9th place.  Not too bad really, because there were a couple of really fast guys off the front.  I didn’t do the “B” race since my wheel was shot and my family was waiting at the mall.  I was really hoping for a better result.  I felt like it could have been better.

Went by a LBS and the ceramic bearings were toast. Took my daughter to a few little shops while we waited.  Expensive art south of Nashville…. Anyway one of the rings around the axle was completely broken.  Not going to work for awhile.  We had a nice dinner and a little shopping around that night and then I swapped tires to a back-up wheel to get ready for Sunday.  BTW, I still want to try tubulars if anyone has an old set they want to get rid of.  AND, the Michelin Mud tires seems to work better in the mud over frozen ground type of course.

Woke up Sunday to 16 degrees and no snow…But it was windy.  Again too cold for my family, so they stayed at the hotel.  But this gave me a little more time.  I got to the course in better shape ready to ride.  I did several pre-ride laps to get warmed up and noticed to 2 spots where the wind was in you face.  I made a mental note to grab a wheel when we hit those areas.  Felt good when I got to the start.  We went across the field and then had a tough, tight 180 turn before we hit the first barriers.  I got the hole shot, but one guy passed me going into the tight turn.  He hit it a little too hard and we kinda bottled up.  But managed to pull out with 3 of us in the lead.  We traded the lead for the next lap and a half.  Then as we started to hit that same turn on lap #3, I made the mistake of being a little outside the wheel of the same guy before.  As a result I got pushed a little outside as he had to slow to make the turn.  Guess what, there was a hole about the size of my front tire right under the edge of the course tape.  I endod big time.  By the time I got up and going again a couple of guys had caught me and I was about 20-30 seconds down on the 2 leaders.  My adrenaline was pumping and I was mad at myself for letting them get away.  I knew we only had 2 laps so I just went all out in an attempt to catch back up.  I ended up dragging one of the guys with me.  We hit the paved road again and I almost caught up, about 5-10 seconds down.  Then I caught a lucky break.  The 2 leaders saw us right behind them and set up for some reason.  So, now we had 4 guys in the lead with just over a lap to go.  I guess they wanted us to help work the last lap and a half.

I was trying to catch my breath after the effort to catch up.  So, I sat on the fourth wheel for a little while.  Not the best place to be.  One of the 2 original leaders jumped on the far side of the field through a pretty fast section.  So, I had to claw my way up again.  We went through a barrier section and down a dirt road with me and #4 dangling just off the 2 leaders.  We hit the road and it was tough.  It was a couple hundred yards of road into the wind before we hit the grass and last little climb before the finish.  I hit the gas and manged to catch up and pull ahead just as we left the road.  But I didn’t have a lot left for the little switch back climb before the finish.  One of the guys passed me at the bottom of the climb and at the top he had about 4 bike lengths on me.  Then it was a 90 degree turn and a 75 yard sprint to the finish.  At that point I couldn’t catch him, but I did manage to pull away from 3rd. 

So, a 2nd place finish.  Not bad for an old, out of shape guy.  Maybe with Bryan’s suggestions I can finish the season strong with a few more podiums.  Honestly, I was disappointed that I didn’t win, but I was stoked with a strong 2nd.  I rode the whole race with the leaders; did my pulls on the front, suffered when I had to; and managed to survive.  The kid who won is about 15 and can’t weigh much more then about 90 lbs.  So, he climbed that last little hill like it was nothing.  It was all I could do to haul my 190 lbs up it and try to stay with him.  He is a tough up and coming junior.  3rd place was a guy who has beaten me several times this year and he has also had some strong finishes.  I think he placed fairly high at the UCI race in Hendersonville.  So, I felt good about it.   I was able to suffer when I had to and still had enough left to get to the finish.

So, trying to get my wheel fixed and survive the “icebox” conditions we have right now.  Looking forward to Crossanooga #1 and #2 this coming weekend.  Talk to ya’ll later.

DS

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.