piney flats

Well, time for a race recap. Yesterday, Saturday, was the Piney Flats road race. For some reason I was completely nonchalant about this race. I didn't know anything about this race, not even the distance. All I knew is there was going to be a road race on that day in Northeast Tennessee. Friday night, I finally decided to look at the flier. I mean after all, I need to get an address for the start so I can get directions. I got on the website and realized that it was a 35 dollar race. Kinda steep for a race that only pays 8 deep. I began contemplating going, until I saw the distance, 86 miles. WOOHOO! Finally, a race with a REAL distance. Longer races suit me. I hate these road races that are only 60 miles. I love the longer races. With that being said, I had to go race it, even if I don't do well, it's still a great day of training. Saturday morning comes early, real early, about 4 am. The race starts at 8 and I am 2.5 hours away. I wake up and immediately start having lower back pains. Not sure why, maybe used the wrong pillow or something, I don't know why. Anyways, I start driving and the back pains persist. I get to the start line and they are still there. Not only that, but I have a water bottle in my back pocket. At this point, I don't even know if I'm going to finish 1 of the 20 mile loops. The race gets going, and before I know it, the pain in my legs was over powering the pain in my back, so I don't really notice the back pains again until after the race. Once the race starts, Jeff Mcgrane (my Teammate) gets in a 4 man break. Sweet, I get to sit in all day. As we just start the 2nd lap, a train stopped the break which had about 30 seconds on us. Luckily, the ref gave them a head start. Once we got going, it was like a club ride, lot's of coasting. the course was rolling, with 3 notable hills that were about 5 minute hills. As the laps pass, I begin looking around and I realize that everyone else is breathing harder than me, cool. Around the start of the 3rd lap, an Industry 9 rider goes on the attack, and immediately gets 15-25 seconds. I begin to bridge to him, and that's when the field bean to get smaller. We started with 25 riders, after we regrouped from this attack, there was probably only 10-12 riders. Coming into the first hill of the last lap, I see Dirk Pohlman head towards the front, and I knew I had to get on his wheel cause the poop was about to hit the fan, and sure enough it does. Dirk begins doing a super hard pull up the hill to try and make a selection/bridging group. I am sitting 2nd wheel the whole time, about 3/4 of the way up the hill, I look back and the field is shattered. There are only 4 guys left. Dirk continues pulling on the downhill and tries to get some type of organization going, but there is none. Everyone is scared of him. We regroup once again. As we regroup, there is a rider that we pass from the break. After this, I am the only person in the selections that has a rider in the break, thus I can sit on the whole time. We come up to the 2nd hill and Dirk heads to the front yet again. This time, my teammate John Hart, was on his wheel. I was sitting 4th wheel. I could see John was struggling and the whole time up the hill I am thinking john don't blow up, John don't blow up. He blew up, but luckily the rider behind him was able to close the gap to Dirk. As we pass John, I tell him "good job" he gave me a much needed break. As we crest the hill, the group is now 7 riders. Everyone is yelling at dirk to do work, but he is doing work. I don't understand it. They were all sucking his wheel, they ALL should have been doing work. We are close to the 3rd and last climb, I attack. I am tired of this stupid lets sit on Dirks wheel game, it is annoying the CROW! I attack and immediately get a gap. 1 guy from Texas bridges up and we work together. After a mile, we are reeled back in. Coming into finish (about a mile) I take a flier. I stay off the front for awhile until I see Dirk chasing me. DANG IT DIRK. Dirk catches me and sort of has a gap, but not really so then that is it. Everyone in the group I was with could outsprint me and so they do. After the flier, I have no legs for the sprint, so I finish 10th, just ahead of Dirk. My teammate Jeff Mcgrane (who was in the break) ended up 2nd. After the race, Dirk comes up to me and tells me he should have just let me go, I feel like this is a very nice thing to say, it meant a lot to me.
I am happy with my form, I'm not peaked or anything like that, but I am a lot better than where I was at the last race. Every week goes by, I am getting better and better. In my entire cycling career, I have never been able to attack on a hill, I am always going towards the back or getting dropped. This was the first race that I actually attacked on a climb in my entire cycling career. I can't tell you how surprised I am. Here I am racing against pros and I can attack them. Whereas when I was racing juniors, I was getting dropped. I really don't know what to think about this other than it is very cool. Although my result doesn't say to much, I feel like my performance did. As I said in my last post, I am willing to sacrifice results in these smaller races for the peak race. Today is the criterium in the same area. Hopefully, I can pull out a similar performance as yesterday. My bro Stefan will be there making his racing comeback. He took a little break from racing when he went to Italy for 6 weeks. This will be his first race back, and he is doing well. We have been training quite a bit the past week or 2. It will be a lot of fun. I'll probably be posting later on tonight giving a recap of the crit.
Thanks for reading my blabbering about racing,
The Crow