mattm

Nice job! Sounds like you'll be a 3 before too long.

mattm

Saturday: Ft. Ord Circuit race 2/3's. Was there for the sprint finish but didn't play the cards right, 8th. Damn.

Sunday: Hanford Crit, Masters 1/2/3's and P/1/2. 7th in both. Damn.

In the p/1/2 the guy that won the Masters race from the break also won this one from a break, and lapped the field. Twice. Ugh.

However I was able to redeem $25 from a field prime and then got in a move of 4 riders with six to go that actually held off the pack, though of course we weren't going for the win. My legs have never hurt that much in a race! Good times.

Came out of Sunday with a new beefy-T and a $45. I'll take it.

wens

I took a brief trip into some gravel yesterday. Fortunately it wasn't sketchy and someone was kind enough to let me in a couple spots back.

echappist

MDCatV, that's great to hear!

they may have actually pulled a Stalin Photo Trick on your result. I know there's one guy in my race whose name didn't show up anywhere in the results. Also wasn't the first mistake they made this weekend as they originally scored me as 1-lap down in the crit and that my teammates as DNF. All of us had to protest...

btw, better go find a photo of yourself and post it in the suffer-face photo thread. pics here (all courtesy of Jan V Polk)
if it were I in that situation, i'd be like: i've found a soft spot to land on

on a more serious note i was asking b/c i'm thinking of things i could have done yesterday when i hooked bars (me being the perp) with another rider and brought both of us down. I really do feel sorry for the other kid as it was my fault for drifting, the worst part being i had no recollection of the drift, just hearing "wtf are you doing man" and then tumbling to the ground. Though truth be told, there was probably nothing either one of us could have done as we were both out of the saddle when the bars hooked.

shovelhd

Were you in the drops (I'm not joking)?

climber7

awesome. i've never really had the chance to participate in any kind of team tactics, so i really wish i could do stuff like this sometimes.

i don't think he'd notice if his hoods just disappeared mid-race. if he's not in IAB, he's always in the drops.

echappist

I was. Or at least i think i was (damn, i cringe at saying that as i can't be sure). Let's say i'm 75% certain i was in the drops.

one thing is certain though, apparently i'm a wrecking ball when i'm too gassed as i really wasn't sure what was going on before it all happened. The mass sprint of the crit (something in which i rarely partake) was a lot safer in comparison.

echappist

Do you happen to know where you'll be next year? You looked very strong in the crit, and i'd think that most teams would love to have you on board.





if you can't do good in a race, at least you gotta look A-E-R-O for the pictures

shovelhd

The reason I ask is that if you were in the drops, you had a good chance to prevent it (get wide), and half a chance to save it (lean, touch brakes, shake free). On the hoods, no chance to prevent it, little chance to save it.

zitter

Humboldt State collegiate race weekend:5th in rr, 3rd in crit

RR: 6 10 mile laps with about 900 feet of climbing per lap. intended to just sit in and survive. covered a move in the second lap up the climb thinking we'd be off the front for a couple minutes and then get caught, but it turned into the winning break. originally 6 of us, dropped one, and I hung on for 5th on a course that didn't suit me very much. finished 3:30 ahead of the field

crit: technical with uphill sprint finish. wet conditions but it didn't stop it from being fast. took 3rd in a close sprint, uploading gopro footage

https://youtu.be/EN25u6T9sSg

Racer Ex 

On the bright side you got to spend a day in Hanford.

There was 1 pre entry in the P1/2. Must have been a rush at the end. Fonseca win?

Creatre

I've hooked bars twice in races that were pretty nasty, both times in the drops, and both times was able to keep it upright. Neither was pretty though, and both were super close calls.

Hida Yanra

U Washington omnium - our home race so most warmups consisted of visualization while corner marshaling.
Weekend temperatures ranged from 49 & rain to 46 & rain... real PacNW weather to be sure.

TL;DR Worked for the team again, team results were: 3rd RR out of the break, 2nd in the TTT, and 2nd in the crit.

RR: two climbs every 6 mile lap, got our climber into the break of 3 that was going to stick, then worked on thinning the pack by drilling the climbs. On the last lap a teammate and I drove the pack for about the whole last lap to the foot of the second climb to launch our other climber for a solo in.
Well, our guy in the break got pulled back by his break mates and then outsprinted, our guy who launched on the last lap got also got caught just before the line and outsprinted. Team 3rd & 6th... so close to 1st and 4th, but the it was the best play we had with the cards available.

Crit: My legs were good, I instigated and drove several breakaways for a good while, brought back some other breaks near the end of the race, drove the leadout for a while, pack finish. Sprinter who fell rather nastily in a corner last weekend got spooked and touched his brakes in the last corner when guys started leaning- 2nd for him. I don't blame him, the whole weekend was really cold, raining, and the roads were somewhere between slick and greasy, and he is still sporting lots of Tegaderm.

As the team captain who decides our tactics on the road, I struggled with whether to call my number to go up the road in the RR breakaway or send the guy that went. I sent the other guy thinking it gave us a better chance at winning, but in hindsight it probably should have been the other way around.

The crit was a tough pill to swallow - I'm still thinking about how to deal with it, our team simply didn't execute our strategy in the last 15 minutes of the race. 1/2 of our current B squad started the year never having raced a crit before, and that was only 6 weeks ago - they have good legs but apparently not quite as good as they thought. I've got a lot more thinking to do about this one.
The biggest bummer of it all is that our sprinter is so automatic that if we wanted to win it we could have just kept it together for the whole race and then we would have won. Instead we attacked the whole race, but the younger guys were gassed the last 15' and didn't tell anyone until it was too late. We were one counter-attack away from making it stick, but this isn't horseshoes.

Eh, it's collegiate racing - lots of learning, lots of racing, lots of being wet and cold.

mattm

The town was actually slightly larger than I expected, but yeah.. Hanford.

Hutch took both the Masters & the 1/2's race.

How was TopSport?

RacerJRP

Kind of an odd weekend for me.

Cat3

Saturday: Philadelphia Naval Yard Criterium - sat 8-15th wheel for first 40 minutes then got a nasty side stitch...floated to the back...then off the back.

Sunday: Ronde van Mullica Road Race - Made it into the break with ~20mi to go...then at about 9mi to go started getting twinges in right leg...went off the back of the break with two others...kept our heads down to finish still about a minute up on the field.

I've been running on E pretty much for the last two months between working and my last semester of school..it caught up with me this weekend. On a positive note, my fitness seems better than expected for the lack of training/ sleep/ nutrition lately....aside from the cramps of course.

shovelhd

Hida, you may have not gotten the results you wanted, but the consistency your team has been showing is a direct reflection of your hard work. Very nicely done.

echappist

it's also a lot of camaraderie and caring. I'm sure your teammates appreciate all the tactical advice and hard work.

TMonk

way to go man.

i cant believe you guys drove all the way up there!
thats my alma mater btw There is some awesome riding out there, esp. once you get into the hills past the redwood forests

zitter

it was beautiful up there. we took the 299 in and the 101 out

climber7

thank you. i think it helped that MIT, KMS, and robin carpenter were all absent, but i did feel pretty good. as for next year, don't know yet. still trying to figure some stuff out.

MDcatV

he's a really good bike racer

mattm

No doubt about that.

Dude has quite the motor.. I jumped on his wheel for a prime held on for a few secs, but he just rode away like he was on a moped.

MDcatV

that was last 3 or 4 years around here. he didnt win everything, but he won allot. he was motivated too, it was as important to win the wednesday night training series as it was district championships.

Racer Ex 

Great until I flatted 1/2 through the road race. Then I woke up sick on Sunday. So it was like this:

Racer Ex 

There's always traffic around the 420 there.