Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Tall Grass Stage Race


Andy Weins & Regan’s let us stay at their town home in Manhattan, KS.  Their place was huge and I bet they have tons of slumber parties!  David picked me up from my place around 6:00pm and before we got to Andy/Regan's place we stopped at a Walgreens for some snacks, bread, cereal, and allergy med's for myself because my nose was like a waterfall.  We got decent rest and got on the road in time but we drove into Fort Riley a Military Camp, they let us go through because they said the bridge would be open... O-boy how they could be so wrong the bridge doesn't open till 8am and that’s when our race started, so now we are stuck driving around on roads that make you want to kill someone because they made no sense and what made it worse is they had so much construction that taking a route was uncertain because you might have to take another road that would lead you down a endless trail of frustration.  I think David was about to pull the car over and bail.  

 
We got the Tall Grass TT Stage with 1 minute left for registration, David and I where getting yelled at fellow teammates and wives’ and girlfriend about we need to get ready and if this was a real race or organize better we would be racing right now.  We both knew people didn’t need to make it worse by rubbing it in.  There was a moment when David and I thought about, ‘fuck it we can race with regular pants, we don’t care!’  The TT was 3.4 miles long and a nice uphill, wish I could have gotten a warm up but you can only do what you can with the cards you are dealt.  I placed 8th out of 9th in the TT. 
 

The Crit was later on in the day; we raced in a parking lot where town homes would be built later on in the year.  Nothing would protect you from the wind at this race, fast figure -8 course, two hills, and scary corners that had drainage pipes underneath a turning-fast down hill, you couldn't just turn into this corner, you would have to turn, straighten your bike, roll over the bump, and turn again-while maintaining a 28-34+mph.  If you didn't turn properly into the corn then you could expect getting some air into and washing out your front wheel and this happened in the master and cat 4s....    
 




I got 2 primes and Justin Leopold placed 1st, Spencer Martin 2nd they stayed away while David and I covered the front with Adam Leopold.  I took off before the start/finish hill for the field sprint. I had that gut feeling that I needed to go now or never, so I jump into the headwind, place myself in the gutter, make the last turn for hill, click-click for more gears and get 3rd place.  
 
Tall grass fucked up all the result even after we fixed everything at awards on Sunday after the road race. I am some how 4th on the Crit and Spencer got 2nd but they have him at 4th.  Doesn't matter the fields where small and they finished us with the proper times... how can you mess up peoples results when everyone had 9 or less starters in each field... It’s not that hard to mark people down...
 
The Road race the 3 had 9 riders and I think the 4s had the same maybe a few more but we started together so the 62 miles RR was a little bit easier.  Some fours where scared at how fast we where riding an especially when we kept attacking, best quote from Hart, " Can you please, tell them to stop attacking." in a soothing voice. I won 3rd for KOM on the first lap, we already had 2 people away in a break and Spencer and Justin had agreed that I go and take it.  Long Story short lots of attacks David and I tried to get away 2 times -3rd time he gets away with Colorado kid, later on we catch the other teammate of the Colorado kid and David followed maybe 10-15 miles later.  Justin, Spencer, David we all know we need to kill it for the KOM hill and leave everyone.  Spencer kills it and I wasn’t in position for this neither do I think Justin was and has a really good gap.  Justin almost rides off the road when he looks back, he catches Spencer and there about 2 times when I almost had 12 bike lengths in catching them, eventually two 4’s racers are working together and catch me and we end up working together.  I drop them up the hill for the finish and get 5th.  

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