Dolan!

First and foremost, I am hereby instilling the 2 1/4 rule. I know I said in my last post that you should check back expecting some awesome writing and photography from my trip down a bit and then back up Skyline Drive. Photos like this ....

And how could you not want to know more about the ride that brought about a picture like that?

The problem, however, is that I'm not made of gold. If I were, I could quit my job (I actually couldn't, but that's not the point) and I would spend my days doing nothing but writing this blog, riding my bike, and drinking fine beers from across the world. Not necessarily in that order.

Since that isn't possible, I'll have to limit my blog posts to race recaps for the moment.

Hopefully I'll find some time in the future, but training and racing have taken up a solid point, being a family man takes up the other point, and somehow I have to fit my full-time job into the quarter-point. Which is very awkward given that they insist on some sort of draconian 8-hour schedule almost 5 days of every week.

Onward to the matter at hand: The Carl Dolan Memorial Howard County Library Other Names Yada Yada race.

I would love to put a picture of the racecourse map right about here, but it would take me like 10 minutes to figure out how to make that happen. Instead, picture a Nascar course with a tight turn at turn 4. And we kept turning right.

This was as close to a Home Race as I am going to get, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't targeting it. About now, I'm really targeting everything I enter so I can get a ton of upgrade points, but this one I especially wanted to do well in.

Before I tell you how I did, though, I should tell you a bit about the race. First off, it was a field of 125 guys. That's a lot of testosterone, adrenaline, and every other hormone that makes guys do stupid, stupid things. That's why Dolan has the dubious honor of being the sketchiest race I've done in a long time. The last race I did that had me puckering that bad was the Bunny Hop Criterium last year. Apparently I wasn't the only one that forgot to take a few psi out of my tires before the start of a wet race because people were skidding and sliding everywhere. This race was in the dry, though. That means the speeds were much higher.

So let me just say a couple things about being sketchy, and let me acknowledge right now that I don't know everything, I'm not the best bike handler that's ever ridden, and I totally know what it's like to crash because i did something stupid. That's why my jersey has my name sewn on it.

Going up

One of the things that gets to me the most is the up-hill clusterfuck-crash. This often happens when one idiot forgets that the race is about to go up the same hill that it's gone up 10 times before. He forgets to shift into the right gear or stays in the drops too long. What happens next is chaos. I was toward the back when this happened, and fortunately everyone came out alright, but the guy next to me just about watched his carbon wheels become carbon bits at the expense of the curb.

Cornering

Stop sucking at this! Seriously, cornering should be something we're all pretty good at. Have you practiced your corning? I doubt it. Why? Because you want to be hella fast up the hills and across the flats. If you crash in a corner, though, not only will that stuff not matter but you'll be bleeding on the ground with a complete lack of sympathy from anyone. Every time you go around a (safe) corner, rail it with reckless ambition. It's better to crash on your own than to crash on the inside of a corner and take everyone out. Fortunately, again, this didn't come to fruition. I honestly don't know how some of those guys didn't crash, but to the best of my knowledge we all got through.

Except the sprint. If I'm honest, I had no idea there was a crash in the sprint until someone told me.

Before that, though, the circuit course provided ample opportunities for suicidal breakaways and subsequent suicidal drives to bring them back. I had the fortune of watching a couple teammates at varying times absolutely bury themselves to close those gaps down. Of all the things in the sporting world, I think that watching a teammate completely destroy his chances of finishing well in a bike race to save a protected rider is by far the coolest.

An American football player might defend against his QB getting sacked, but he

wouldn't give up his chance to wear a SuperBowl ring to keep some other guy out of trouble. That same analogy goes for basically every other sport i can think of. Watching a lead-out, or one guy bringing in a breakaway, is something you only see in cycling, and it's why this sport is so damn cool.

So with all that, I managed to come into the last lap at least a little fresh. granted, my heart was pounding out of my chest, but that's bike racing.

The sprint started somewhere around the 500m to go mark, and I knew I didn't have the power to sprint away or the endurance to keep pushing the pedals for that long. Everyone else was starting, and I figured it was way too early.

So I started sprinting. Because I'm a moron. I probably could have grabbed a wheel, held on, and kicked with 200m to go, but you know how adrenaline gets. As I watched the signs go by every 100 meters, I had varying thoughts. As I rolled over 200, I distinctly remember thinking "Oh shit, this is going to end badly."

I was totally spent. I kept kicking the pedals over, and somehow I came home somewhere around 6th or 7th.

Which marks my 3rd top-10 in 4 starts. 2 of those races were Cat3/Cat4 races . GamJams even classified me in their Cat3 Cup on accident. Also, this race counts the 3's and the 4's as being 2 different races run at the same time. Because of that, I actually won! So that's a win, a 5th, a 6th, and a pack finish. What's most important to me is that I've proven that I can be competitive with a Cat 3 field. In my book that's more important than winning a bunch of 4/5 races so you can get the points and move up.

That said, next week I'll be in Cancun getting my vacation on. The week after that, however, I'll be in the 4/5 race trying to collect some points out at Turkey Hill. I guess when it comes down to it, I'm ready to race with the 3's, and if I have to do some 4/5 races to make the points up quicker then I will. I think it's kind of bogus that that happens, but I definitely saw a Kelly Benefits rider in the 4/5 race at Dolan that was doing the same thing. Of course, after saying all that, I'll get totally shelled at T-Hill, and go home with my tail between my legs. But that's bike racing, and for some reason I love it.

Also, with the win comes an upgrade in beer selection. Remember to treat yourselves right out there.

Insanity at Tyson's Corner

"They" say that insanity is doing the same thing time and time again while expecting the result to be different. "They" may be right.

I say that because today was the Tyson's Corner Circuit Race, and much like the Vint Hill Crit, I came within the top-10, but found myself a bridesmaid yet again. But why? That's the question you are surely dying to know.

The race started out with a frantic search for an ATM. I hadn't paid my entry fee yet, and I remembered that just as we turned off of the freeway. Thanks to gamjams.net and the handy "List-Lurker" I found out that the Tyson's Corner race was open to registration a bit late. That's because it's still early in the season, and a bunch of guys still like riding their bikes right now. That means the races fill up in minutes, and if you miss the boat you're stuck in the waiting list. Which is alright if you aren't real dedicated to racing that weekend or you don't have the cash on hand given that you don't have to pay to be on the waiting list. You will, however, need to have some cash when you register. Which I didn't.

So we searched rather frantically for an ATM in a remarkably ATM-unfriendly area. Thanks to the Subaru turbo, we found a cash dispensing device, and promptly got lost trying to get somewhere near the course.

Thanks to the good people at Apple, we got even more lost. Seriously, fix your "maps" app. It seems to suck only when I need it most.

But then we got there, and the course was really well marked, well road-guarded, well staffed at registration, and really rather good. Thanks (not sarcastically) to the guys over at NCVC.

I got all the essentials taken care of, and then took off my heart rate monitor's strap. My Garmin was plugged into the computer at home. Sweet.

So I warmed up without any idea of where my heart rate was. Which was absolute tragedy. I mean, I could have used my finger, a watch, and my neck/wrist/thigh to figure it out, but I couldn't have possibly done that while knowing exactly how fast I was going. And when the race got underway, I knew I'd be hosed because I would watch people ride away from me trying desperately to make a break, and I wouldn't know how fast they were going. Or if I was going to die trying to catch them.

That or I just tossed the stupid strap in the car. It's uncomfortable anyway.

And then the smoke started.

Coming from an NCVC tent was the real-life smoke monster. It smelled strangely like grilling meat, but I guess on Lost, you never really find out what the smoke monster smells like. So right as I crossed the area of the start-finish line, I got to breathe in charring meat smoke, and

think about how sweet that would be for like 20 laps.

We staged up, ready for the race, and were ordered to "Take a lap!" because we had staged earlier than the USA Cycling Ref. would have preferred. It's worth noting that this might have been for our benefit given that we were sitting there right in the stream of smoke.

And then we started racing, and you know what? Not that remarkable. If I'm honest, it was a rather boring race. I didn't help with that at all, and most of the time that I was on the front, I quickly found my way back a few wheels. I mean, really though, I didn't have any other teammates there, and it was destined to be a sprint finish. So I stayed at the front, took a pull when it was necessary, and waited with breathless anticipation. Or I was gassed every time we went up that damn hill. Whatever.

The bit that matters was, of course, the sprint finish. This one went up a bit of a hill, and while it wasn't "A climb" it was definitely an incline. I came into 1 lap to go in absolutely dreadful position some 30 places back or so, and managed to make up about 25 of those spots on the downhill. I don't know how or why, but I seem to descend quicker than most other people.

I'm not really that much heavier anymore, I'm not riding some crazy bike or wheel combo, and I'm actually much taller than most. Whatever. I made up some spots, and sprinted up the hill.

I really mucked up the gear selection, though. about a hundred meters from the line I was spun out, and I was waffling between trying to spin it out all the way or drop a gear. I figured if I dropped a gear I'd lose a place, and if I didn't, it could go either way. So I stayed where I was, looked around to see that I was 5th, was content was that, and then saw someone pip my 5th right at the line.

So why is that insane? Why is 2 top-10s in 3 races bad? Because I'm not first, damnit. I just don't have the kick at the line that I did last year (as in 3 podiums, 1 win). So it's time to hit the gym and get these chicken legs back where they were. I thought it was a good thing that I had lost weight in the legs, but it seems that there have been some side-effects. So why don't I do that, and I'll let you know how it goes.

On a very positive note, I won real money today.

That's $15 to be exact.

And I promptly spent it the way I believe all prize money should be spent.

So if you'll excuse me, I need to attend to said winnings, and watch the rest of Paris-Roubaix.

See you at Dolan next week (Another up-hill finish) and stand by to learn about my ride along Skyline Drive. It was totally epic! OK, so it wasn't epic at all. It was just a really great ride along a road that was laid for no reason other than to showcase how awesome our planet can be in one of the best non-California parks around.