Redlands, Day 2

Today was the first stage of the Redlands Bicycle Classic, „The City of Baumont Road Race”. We had to complete 4 laps of 39 km, which came out to 155 km of fun. As we got out of the van at the start we were nearly blown off our feet… this wind also made the race pretty hard. Fortunately, we didn’t have too many cross wind sections but in the few that we had the race got very chaotic. People just don’t know about echelons here apparently, so everyone rather sits in the gutter and open up gaps when they pop… Enough said.

As if that wasn’t hard enough, we had a couple of miles of super smooth, slightly downhill roads with a tailwind. Now, that doesn’t sound bad but according to my SRM I maxed out at 191 rpms and about 55 mph and still couldn’t hold some wheels. Not my favorite part of the race.

Anyways, the race blew apart a couple of times but rolled back together until the last lap. Once we hit the climb on the lap, my legs where so shot that I had nothing left and had to let the pack go. I found myself in the fourth bigger chase group after it was all said and done together with Andrew. We finished 1:41 down and I dropped to 80^th in GC. Not the kind of result I was looking for but I feel that this is about what I am capable of doing at this point so I have to be happy with it.

Tomorrow we’ll race the crit. It looks very technical and should be hard again. But I am confident that we will do all right and am actually looking forward to it. I’ll keep you posted.

News form California

It is Wednesday night, the eve of the Redlands Classic Prolog. We had a couple of days to recover from the rigors of the San Dimas Stage Race and I must say Randy Lisa, our hosts, made our time very enjoyable. Between beach time, great home made food and great breakfast at the beach, we are all ready to go and can't wait to finally all race tomorrow. But take a look for yourself.

Today we prerode the prolog course here at Redlands and the team is pretty undecided on what bike to use. Most of the course is uphill, even though only the last kilometer of the five are really steep. I guess I'll go with the road bike as long as the wind doesn't pick up over night... we shall see.

You can find out if the choice of material was the right one tomorrow night - right here.

Mobile Update from San Dimas

I don't have internet up here so here is just a very brief update from this weekends racing. It was a very strange experience as we got here and didn't know if we were even racing as the race was full and we were on the waiting list. So we had to actually sit at registration all geared up and wait and hope that someone would not pick up their number. I was the "lucky" one to get the first and only spot that opened up; the others didn't get as lucky and had to watch from the sideline. Very disappointing!
As for the race itself: the TT went ok, the circuit race was extremely hard and the crit super fast. I got dropped at the end of the circuit race but still finished within the time limit. In the crit today I was so tired though that I was happy just to hang on and finish with the pack.
Hopefully I'll be able to recover from this weekends ordeal and be better prepared for Redlands next week.
More soon.

Rouge Aftermath

Most of this week was spent dealing with the side effects of racing on dirt roads. Also, I didn’t have to ride that much because I was on an off week and the weather was pretty miserable, so it called for some indoor activities. It took me quite a while to get the all the dirt off my bike and gear.

I also finally got a new phone this week. No more begging to use a teammates phone to write a text and no more missing out on team dinners due to the lack of availability. I spend a lot of time this week just getting used to the new thing as it has many more features than any of my old phones. A nice toy for sure.

The rain this week also prevented me form going down to Waco to race another mtb race of the TMBRA series. The promoter postponed the event due to the adverse condition on the course… so much for rain or shine. I was pretty bummed about that as I always liked that race and also because I will probably not be able to race a lot more mtb races this year.

The good thing about all of this is that I got to sleep in most of the days and just had a lazy week, recovering and getting ready for our California trip. We will be leaving tomorrow far about two weeks, racing San Dimas and Redlands over at the west coast.

Stay tuned for more on that trip.

More Rouge News

First of all, I completely forgot to mention that the girls had an incredible showing at Rouge as well. Casey finished 1st, Ashley 2nd, Whitney 4th, Shannon 5th and Andrea finished 9th. Good job!

Now, I'm sure you've seen this video on one of the others blog already but just in case you haven't here it is. Look for us in the first part of the video but keep watching to get an idea of just how painful that last dirt section was ;-) Enjoy.

Also, we made it into the New York Times! Check it out.

Rouge Roubaix

Last Friday it was about this time of year again to head down to Louisiana for Rouge Roubaix so we put on some 25C tires and loaded up the van and drove down to St. Francisville near Baton Rouge. Saturday we prerode some of the course, which makes sense as there area about 20 miles of dirt roads to cover during the race. The dirt was much looser this year as it hadn’t rained in the last couple of weeks so that made it just that little bit harder. Good thing we knew what to expect for Sunday.

The problem with this race is that it starts darn early (plus we lost an hour due to the time change) and that, no matter how good you feel, there is always a good chance that you will have some kind of technical problem. I for example flatted last year in the last dirt section, a mishap that probably cost us the win. This year, Ashley started it off on Saturday, not with a flat but a more serious issue. Her derailleur hanger broke and her derailleur ended up in her spokes, getting caught between the wheel and the frame and snapping the seat stay… not a good start. Unfortunately, this would not be the last technical issue of the weekend but at least the only one for Saturday.

Our strategy for this weekend was very different from the one we used in years past. Instead of controlling the race for the first 80 miles until the last dirt section, we send guys off early and rode much more aggressive. Mat was the first one to take off. He attacked just a couple of 100 yards into the race and was out of sight in no time. It took a while until the pack started to react (this might have been due to the fact that it was still only shortly after 8 am) but after about 15 miles a group of about 10 guys went off the front in pursuit of Mat. Cory covered that move for us, so we already had two guys off the front, just as we had planned. The idea was for Mat and Corey to attack early and try to make it as far ahead up the road so that we would have someone to bridge up to for Benji, Peter, Andrew and myself at the end. So, so far, so good.

As we approached the first dirt section, the lead pack had a gap of about 3 minutes but that changed dramatically by the time we got though it. At first, we just sat in the top 5 to10 but people were picking such bad lines that I decided to pick my own line. Apparently I picked up the pace in the process and Andrew and Gonzo took over the pace later on though the dirt section. By the time we had cleared the section, the pack had dwindled down to about 15 guys and the lead group was back in sight. Shortly thereafter we bridged up to the lead and now had the whole team in the lead pack of about 30 guys. At this point Mat, Corey and Gonzo went to the front and rode a nice tempo, just to make sure the group wouldn’t fill up by guys riding back into it.

Shortly before the second dirt section, Peter and Benji attacked simultaneously and got a little gap on the group. Unfortunately, the move came a bit too close to the dirt section and the two couldn’t get a big enough gap to make it over the KOM. As soon as we caught them, Andrew and I went to the front and forced the pace. I managed to ride away a little form the rest and go over the climb in first. This year a made sure to actually grab the bill for the KOM price. As a side effect of winning the KOM, the pack blew apart again and only Andrew, Peter, Travis Burandt and Evan Hyde were left at the front. The other two guys wouldn’t work with us, so we decided to let the chase group catch us. That left a lead group of 12 with Peter, Andrew, Benji and me in it and one more dirt section to go. At this point, we had covered about 66 of the 101 miles of the race.

Ten miles later, Mat Davis attacked and no one would chase him down. He is a good time trailist but I was not overly worried as we still had one dirt section to go and a pretty hard run-in to the finish so I told the others to stay calm and not waste any energy on chasing him down. Apparently, not everyone was of that mindset and the others in the group started to complain that we were making a mistake in letting Mat go and, as we were the strongest team in the group, we should chase him down. Instead, Peter attacked and chased by himself, taking any kind of pressure off our back and the others had to organize the chase. This put us in an excellent position to attack into the last dirt section. As soon as we hit the bottom of the climb at the start of the third and last dirt section, I went to the front and put the hammer down. The climb wasn’t very long but with 15% on gravel pretty steep and I opened up a gap pretty easily. Andrew followed Travis’ wheel up the climb and as soon as he was cracking, jumped across to me. Together we went on to hunt for Mat and, sure enough, about half way though the dirt section we had him reeled in. We tried to drop him on one of the shorter climbs but couldn’t shake him at first but I managed to open up a gap on the downhill and pushed hard up the last climb in the dirt section. That opened up a gap and Andrew, after seeing that Mat would not be able to close the gap, attacked on the same climb to drop Mat for good.

Once out of the final dirt section I waited for Andrew and together we worked hard to consolidate out gap. Those last 20 miles were really hard as we were going into a head wind and the roads were neither smooth nor flat. With about 5 miles to go Andrew had to sit on more and with about 2 to go he dropped off my wheel. I wanted to wait for him at first but as we didn’t know how big our gap was, I decided to play it safe and keep pushing to make it to the finish. Also, I figured if our gap was big enough, he would make it anyways but if not, we might loose everything.

So I got the honor of finishing up a great piece of team work by riding in by myself to win our first Rouge Roubaix. Andrew came in second, Peter fifth, Benji seventh, Gonzo 13^th and Joe 16^th. What a result! Everyone on the team preformed terrific and we had great support by Andre all weekend long.

This was definitely one of the hardest earned wins so far but it was well worth it. As always, the race was just epic and despite the pain a lot of fun. Hope to be back next year.

For some pics check out Shannon’s facebook and http://www.firstpics.net

A week in Austin

As mentioned in the other post Andrew, Gonzo, Benji, me and my girlfriend Christine stayed in Austin after Pace Bend for a week. Thanks to the UT cycling house for letting us stay there for that time. We got some real good training rides in and I also got to spend some down time with Christine chilling out at the local coffee shops while the boys went exploring the UT campus (I’m sure you’ll get to read on their adventures on the respective blogs). All in all it was a fun week and we finished it up with the Saturday road race at Lago Vista. We rode pretty well as a team, Andrew making the lead group and Benji and myself controlling any attacks. Unfortunately, Andrew couldn’t quite hang with the leaders towards the end of the race. I took a flyer with one lap to go and got a good gap but got caught with about 500 meters to go. Not that it would have made a big difference as I was only racing for 5th. Benji ended up finishing 13th, I finished last of the pack and Andrew had already called it quits as soon as he got caught by the pack…

Sunday we were back in Dallas and Demian, Christine and I drove up to Bar-H to race some dirt for a change. Mad Duck supplied me with a bike to race on (thanks for that by the way) and after a little playing around with it I had it to where I felt comfortable enough on it despite freezing temperatures (we started at 9 am and it was about 27). The race went really well even though I could definitely feel my legs from the previous day effort. I ended up riding away with a win, the first of the season.

Right now we are sitting in St. Francis, LA killing some time and getting ready for Rouge-Roubaix tomorrow. Everyone is really hot and ready to race. Hopefully we will make it though without any technical issues… 20 miles of gravel roads hold a lot of potential for flats. I’m optimistic though and I am convinced will do just fine.