Where did my Luck go?

As I am typing this I’m sitting on the plane back home to Phoenix. It feels good to know that I have an easy week in front of me and that I am going to get to spend some time with my girlfriend. As a matter of fact, I will be sitting in the plane later today again, heading out to San Diego: Oh yeah, it’s beach time!

Anyways, I finished my first racing block yesterday with the Rouge Roubaix race in Louisiana and what can I say: even though the outcome wasn’t as I had hoped for, I still had a blast. For those of you who never heard of this race: It is a 100 miles over rather bad roads with 3 gravel road sections (adding up to about 30 miles of dirt overall) and some decent climbing. This in itself would have made for a fun race but we finally were able to work as a team this weekend too. The Metro Volkswagen Cycling Team pretty much controlled the whole race, from the start to about mile 80. It was a beautiful thing to watch: 3 to 4 guys setting the tempo at the front, keeping a nice tempo, sheltering the others. Everyone did their job exceptionally well. Gordon, Anuthee and Parker set the pace leading up to the first dirt section; Will, Peter, Mike and Joe pulled us to the second one before Peter joined in to lead me and Nathan right to the bottom of the steepest climb of the day, right at the start of the last dirt section. From there on it was up to me to establish a break and go for it. This all worked out perfectly well for a couple of miles: I pulled away on the climb and had a solid gap to the next guy, who himself had a good lead over the first bigger chase group. I was feeling really good and was going strong. By the time I was about halfway through the last dirt section, I started to ease up and pick my line a bit more carefully. This, apparently, was not the best idea: just as I was starting to play it safe, I must have hit something, even though I didn’t feel anything. All I know is that my rear tire blew and was flat within a second with a dime-sized gash in the sidewall… Mike was the first of our guys to reach me and immediately sacrificed his rear wheel, but by this time about three groups and 5 minutes or so had gone by. With Nathan and Peter’s help, I managed to get back into the second chase group but that was about it. The guy that had been chasing me alone before I got my flat managed to stay away, even though the group chased hard. I am pretty sure that I could have finished right there with him, had I been able to avoid the flat. But that’s racing, I guess.

So we had a somewhat disappointing finish to a great day. On a positive note, the girls had a very good race too with Shannon finishing third. Also, as mentioned earlier, the team worked really well. So I guess with a little more luck next time we might finally start winning some races soon ;-)

For now, I’ll have a little break from racing. This week will be an off week for me. That’ll be nice, only some easy training and some time off the bike. And if the weather holds up, I might even be able to try my luck at surfing in San Diego! That should be fun…