Memorial Weekend

Ok, sorry for taking so long to get you updated on this but I had to take some time off after the past weekend and spend some „quality time” with my girlfriend, Christine, who had come to visit for a little bit. Now I’m sitting in Tulas, OK at the Tulsa Tough and waiting for the rain to pass and race time to come around. But back to last weekend.

The team did the Glickman Memorial on Saturday to practice rotations and the lead out a little bit. Unfortunately, it was very hot and Nathan pulled most of us out in order not to overtax ourselves. By that time the break had gone up the road and the race was pretty much over. The only to guys that stayed in were Leo and myself. We had planned to ride for the team so none of us was in the break; I went with a late attack and we managed to get close to the leaders. At the same time the five guys in the break started to attack each other. We couldn’t quite catch the leaders but managed to catch the remnants of the break to sprint for third. I felt good and went for it. It was a pretty long sprint, but it worked out just fine. So even though we missed the decisive move early on, we still managed to salvage a third place.

But my day wasn’t done just yet: I jumped off the bike and into the car, raced home, took a shower and got into my suit to go to a wedding of a friend of mine. It was a fun party but we couldn’t stay too long because we had a team dinner a little later at Lee’s. It was funny seeing the guys and girls’ looks when we walked in all dressed up (and not in team apparel). It was a fun day.

Sunday I finally got to ride my mountainbike for a change. I hadn’t been on Northshore since it was flooded last year and I had a blast just cruising along. Christine took her brand new Santa Cruz Heckler out for a first ride and loved it. Thanks to Clarence and Gary from Mad Duck for building her such a great bike. She loves it! So everything was good for Monday.

As I saw a lot of you out at the race on Monday, I’ll be brief. The original plan was to keep it steady and all together and set up Nathan for the sprint. Unfortunately, Nathan’s hand wasn’t as good as we had hoped and the tempo was to sporadic, so we had to change our strategy towards the end of the race. I started covering moves within the last 30 minutes of the race, basically just following wheels. With about 20 minutes to go I found myself in a break with Tyler, Ian Dille and Andrew Dahlheim. That was the break. Leo did a great job at shutting down Stephan and we opened up a good gap. We worked together pretty well and it started to look really good. I didn’t have to work at all throughout the first hour of the race thanks to the great work by the rest of the team so I felt pretty good towards the end. With five to go, we flew though the second to last corner; I was sitting third wheel but carried way more speed through the turn than the two in front of me. I hadn’t planed on going that early but the opportunity was too good to pass so I accelerated hard out of the turn and had a gap immediately. From there on it was all about going as hard as possible. The way the course is set up, I knew that I if I made it into the last lap with about five seconds I would be able to stay away, so I went really hard to establish a solid gap with two to go. I was actually able to increase my gap and I think that was when the elastic snapped and the others started to attack each other, which gave me some extra breathing room. The last lap felt weird, I knew that I had it but with all my mechanicals lately, I didn’t feel save until I was over the line. It was a great feeling. There were tons of people at the race, the atmosphere was great and winning put the icing on the cake.

Overall, the team had a great day, with Jenny riding away with the Women’s tile and Rachel winning the 3s.

Ok, so that wasn't that brief after all but I hope you enjoyed it anyways :-)