racing

5/12/07 Withrow 40k time trial...suppose to be the safest race!?!

The first half went great. Brand new Orbea Ora was very smooth. Sporting 808s. Based on my computer time for the first half I was expected to finish at ~1:07.

I guess the 3 straight days of rain waterlogged my brain, because I missed the registration cut-off for the crit by 2 minutes. As I was getting ready to pack up the car and drive from Boulder to Louisville last Sunday for the Louisville Crit I decided at the last minute to do my warm up en-route and ride out there. My race started at 10:30, and by the time I got there (10:20) they had closed registration and wouldn't give me a number.

That sucked. I felt like crap on the bike the day before, but was feeling pretty solid on the way out so I was really bummed to miss the start. I don't have a ton of races under my belt, but I had never heard of registration cut-offs like that.

If any of you raced the Koppenberg on April 1, check out my audio slideshow...maybe I got a picture of you.

http://www.dailycamera.com/videos/2007/apr/09/25/

cheers,
Marty

Guess my season was a little long this year. I have been racing since late February and hit my breaking point right in the middle of cross season. I started to realize it late in the road season and tried taking some time off but it wasn’t enough. So now I sit here with my bikes still in the box from the USGP in Portland. I’ll have to take them out soon and build them up. We have the ACA Colorado State Championship race next Saturday. My riding has been limited to working as a bike messenger for the Denver/Boulder Couriers. It has been really cold lately and dodging cars in the slush has been the name of the game.

Harshman Wealth/Primus Mootry spent the weekend up in the Northwest competing in USGP’s five and six. Saturday was in Seattle on a fast dry course with the longest run up of the series. I lined up in 29th position and had a good start. As usual, the gaps started to form and I was in a group of six rounding out the top thirty. The course had plenty of clean passing area but these two guys in my group kept trying to pass in the corners. Not only were they wasting tons of energy but also disrupting the flow for everyone else and decreasing our chances of catching the next group. My plan was to jump to the next group and get away from them before one of them took me out. I must have realized this a second too late because just before the straight where I was going to make my move one of them T-boned me trying to make a stupid pass in the corner. He hit my rear derailleur and bent it into my spokes. I was able to shift it into the hardest gear to keep it from staying in the spokes and breaking off. I made it to the pit and received a new bike very quickly but I had lost quite a few spots. I chased back to the group I was with and slowly worked my way past most of them finishing in 47th position. Not really what I was hoping for but I’ll chalk it up to a learning experience.