Kelly Cup

Should I apologize for not updating this sooner? Yeah, I probably should. I've done a few races, but they really haven't been a ton of fun to write about. Namely, I raced Turkey Hill a few weeks ago where I tried to go with a guy at at about 1.2-1.5K to go, but he didn't have the legs to do it at all, and I didn't have the legs to do it alone. Knowing I was screwed, I decided to just go ahead and pull everyone to the line. It was like leading out absolutely no one and everyone all at once. What I can say is that from 1K to go until about 200M to go, no one came around me. That means I held tempo super high, and would be a killer lead-out man if only I had a teammate right behind me. I didn't, though, so I just ended up with a 12th.

Then at Poolesville I had what is scientifically called a clusterfuck. I lost a bottle on the first trip over the dirt road section. Knowing that I didn't want to lose the other bottle, I closed my cage in closer a bit so it would be more secure. Taking a drink, I went to replace my bottle. It hit the cage where I had closed it down, and then I fumbled it. So I had taken like 2 sips of water for a 50 mile race. Fortunately, my teammate's dad had told me he would give me a bottle at the feed zone. I took him up on that and basically figured that if I could finish the race it would leave me so dehydrated I would be best to find my way to a hospital for a bag of fluids. Oh, and I tried to bridge to a 2-man break. That left me in no-man's land for about 5 miles. Then I gave up and the peloton wanted me to stay at the front. Not cool, guys. Shortly before finishing the 3rd (30ish miles) we went up a slight incline. I had just told my teammate Tim that I was feeling like crap and was almost out of water. He offered me his. Then brakes squealed, the pack bunched up, and someone went right into my front wheel. It just took me off into the dirt, but my chain dropped when it happened. I looked down at it, and though well, I could put this back on and chase to the peloton. That would be a pretty manly move. Or .... nah, fuck it, I'm staying right here. So that was the end of that race.

Today was the Baltimore Bike Jam/Kelly Cup that runs through Patterson Park in downtown Baltimore.

The course is paved to exactly the level you would expect of downtown Baltimore. There were no bits where you could see brick, but you got the feeling it was there every now and then. That and man-hole covers (that had paint pointing them out) that were way too high, and had little round ramps surrounding them. That or the pavers tried to make it less brutal to hit. I'm pretty sure they did a stunt show on those things afterward.

So we started riding, I missed my pedal because I'm a dumb-ass, and about 20 seconds later the attacks started. And they didn't stop. Again, the Team BBC crew was pretty thin for this race, and I knew that there would be no one to pull in the breaks or set tempo at the front. Which left it pretty much up to me. I did a lot of work at the front today, and took a couple digs in an attempt to make a break myself. None of that came to fruition.

What did stick was a solid attack by Mike Cohen from the Kelly Benefits team. With somewhere between 5-7 laps to go, he rocketed off the front. He had been off the front a few times before and I figured he was probably pretty tired. Also, he used to ride for BBC, and I don't mean him any disrespect when I say that I was convinced he wouldn't be able to hold on alone to the finish. I was wrong. We got time gaps from the road of 17 seconds and other numbers around there. He was just barely out of sight.

As typically happens there were only about 3-4 of us that wanted to do anything in the way of bringing him back. There was also rather rampant disorganization which didn't help anything at all. Every time I would take a pull, I would slow a bit, cruise to the left or right, and flick the opposite elbow. Nothing happened. So I would waggle the damn thing in the wind in some attempt to get other people to pull through. Ya know, like a pace-line. Didn't work. The only time people came by me were for attacks. Almost all of those attacks lacked heart and were easy to mark.

So I cruised it up to the sprint knowing that the best I could get was 2nd.

With 250ish meters to go, I dropped a gear and got to work. I looked up for a moment to see Mike Cohen with his arms raised as he crossed the line. Then I looked back at my sick new yellow shoes and kept pushing.

In the end I rocketed past everyone else and got the 2nd spot on the podium. Which means Cohen took the 7 points I needed to get my requisite 20 points to upgrade. That leaves me 2 points shy. I'll get those sometime soon.

There, now you're all caught up. I'll try to update this more often, but life can get in the way sometimes.

And a note on cornering: You may remember a post or two ago I said that people need to practice their cornering. This course really showed that. there was a wicked chicane at the bottom of the course. Last year in the wet it was super duper incredibly sketchy. This year, though, it was awesome! The problem is that most of the time there was someone in front of me which means I couldn't go in or come out as fast as I wanted. Or, there was no one in front of me and when I came out of the corner I had to sit up and wait for people to catch up. So, once again, go find a corner you can rail, and do it. You'll make me happier and we can race together all happy-like. And isn't that what it's all about?

Thanks for reading and I'll see you at the races.

p.s. I'll update this post with photos tomorrow or Tuesday