Leland.  Meh.  The title says it all.

So….what else is new?

Raviv is off to Gila.  He’s a hos.  No doubt about it.

Scott is recovering from his hernia surgery….by riding.  For some reason I feel guilty just thinking about that.

Iowa.  There was a race omnium there this last weekend.  Being Tim Speciale alma matter he saw fit to head that way and unleash the awesome.  He did OK.  Got enough points to upgrade.  He’ll be a 3 now.  Raviv isn’t far behind.

So Matt Cook – our red-headed 2010 version of Ryan Austin – went along with Tim to Iowa.  Now this guy has promise.  He’s a 5 but carries himself on a bike with that gait of a natural rider.  He’s made quick progress in a short period of time but it seems his season has been filled with lots of luck.  The bad kind.

Let’s start at the beginning:  Matt, brother of someone near and dear to Speciale, was brought into the sport late last fall.  Speciale worked long and hard to cobble together a rig that Cook could throw a leg over and call his own.  The result is a hodge-podge of gear that is either completely worn out or cast aside.  Every time I get in a line behind him I am waiting for the thing to start dropping pieces.  Yet he rides it.  Hells yes.

Before Hillsboro Speciale had me order up some decent but cheap tires for Cook to get him through the season.  Because Speciale ended up on the PSIMET carbon for Hillsboro he gave Cook the opportunity to ride on his powertap.  Last minute tire and tube swap and Cook was cooking with gas.

4 miles in to the 5′s race – flat.  He spent the rest of the race in the chase truck.  I felt bad for him having to go all that way down there to flat in the first 4 miles.  On the way back Speciale discovers that there is a hole in the sidewall – Cook must have put the tire lever through it mounting the tire that morning.

Flash forward to last couple of weeks.  Every ride Cook goes out on he gets a flat.  WTF!?  I am not there but keep hearing about it.  I’m starting to think I need to watch him replace a tube.  Last Tuesday he flats again.  Twice.  In the same ride.  Somethings up but I use it as an opportunity to poke fun at him.

So we go out riding Thursday.  Going into a turn – POP!  I was behind him and watched it happen.  It was an over pressurization failure – tube no longer restrained by the tire for sure.  I look it over and nothing.  I pull the tube out and it indeed has the telltale longitudinal tears but they are very small.  I am careful to keep the tire on and oriented the same as the tube so I can study the sidewall…. it’s torn…..

Just then Ryan comes up and says, “hey, his brake in the rear on the right side was rubbing.”  The tire has a groove worn all along it from where the brake pad had been rubbing on the tire every time he hit the brakes. *sorry Pandora just kicked in with Cake – going the distance*  This was pure ball-busting gold.  All I could think about was all of the problems he’s had with flats and he never once figured out the root cause – tons of tubes, 2 tires…nothing.  It was almost like someone had asked him when the last time he changed the oil in his car and he responded with, “you have to change that?”  In the end I was just happy we found the root cause and I could be reasonably certain he wasn’t going to be affect by flats like he was.

So – with everything working as it should- he set off to Iowa.  I got the following text from Speciale after the road race:

“I got nipped at the line and finished 4th…matt got hit by a f*****g..deer”

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaaaaaa.

an hour later I got around to asking if he was OK.  I guess I just knew he was.  I called him later in the day to get his report – “everything was going great then someone yelled ‘DEER!’ at the same moment I saw something big, brown and furry off to my side.  Before I knew what was going on I was on the ground.  I f’n hate deer.”

“I got right back on the bike and kept racing.  I didn’t really know where I was or what I was doing for about 10 minutes.  Then I dropped my chain twice and got it stuck.  Somethings up with the bike.  I need a new helmet too.”

Tim Speciale and Matt Cook Warming Up. Photo: Katie Cook

Matt's Revenge. Photo:Katie Cook

Congrats to PSIMET Sponsored Rider Debbie Dust for winning the Women’s Open category at the John Fraser Memorial Time Trial on Sunday while riding some PSIMET 50mm carbon clinchers. not only did she win her category her second run was 3rd fastest as well. She was also the fastest woman of the day!

Her blog report is here:
http://velogoddess1.blogspot.com/2010/04/game-on.html

Results are here:
http://www.ambikerace.com/2010/resuts/JFMTTresults.pdf

Also congrats to Joe Berenyi!! His 4th place in Sunday’s TT (1 day after Hillsboro) secured him the overall victory in Cat 4 for the entire series.

http://www.abdcycling.com/results/2010/indoorttseries/overall.pdf

2nd Place Cat 4 - How Speciale.

….a brick…house…..

Hillsboro. That Southern Illinois early spring getaway. The land of my ancestors…OK…just my mother and her family. I have spent so many nights in hotels in Litchfield I am starting to feel like a local.

Friedman, Knoepke, Tabor and myself all headed down late on Friday. This gave us an opportunity to appreciate the Illinois scenery at dusk and early night. I have found this to be the best time to appreciate this vast expanse of corn and goodness we call home. It makes the driving…uh…yeah.

Scott had hooked us up in a place called something like, “America’s Best Country Inn”-ish uh thingy. Upon arrival we were told that it would cost more….because we had 2 in each room. *wha?* The rooms themselves were interesting. Scott made sure I knew that the toilet didn’t have “enough Oooomph” to “power down” any “real damage”. Nice right? To top it off he placed a pleasant thought about the beds, the state of soil on the sheets and that the only people probably using them were old people…..nighty-night!

6:15 came and we made a beeline for the place:

Breakfast. Of. Champions. - L to R Joel Friedman, Matt Cook, Kyle Tabor, Tim Speciale, and Scott Knoepke

Turns out 4 hours before a road race should be perfect timing for a meal…but I should have had something before the start.

I brought some carbon for Speciale to ride. I have been concentrating on riding my powertap, and let’s face it I will learn more from that than I will benefit from the carbon at this point…which really means I am waiting for my powertap hubs to come in so that I can build some for me…err….the uh….team….demo….product… yeah.

So once we got to the race I was busy mounting tires, cassette, setting brakes, etc. Kudos to Speciale letting my mess with his setup the morning of a race. Especially since we all knew he would most likely be in contention. I may not race well, but this is my thing….and I do it well.

I got my frequent flyer card punched at the porta-pottys – I have a coffee cup made out of toilet paper as a free gift on the way. We waited….and then waited….and then waited…. I had my cat 5 moment of zen as I was called out by an official for having one of my numbers too high. Luckily Nikki Cyp re-pinned me. It TOTALLY took me back.

Waiting....L-R: Kyle in black helmet behind, Raviv, Me, Joe Berenyi

So…race… Epic Failure. As predicted.

The race started like a cat 5 crit. There was so much nervous energy. The pack started this death cycle between all out and all on the brakes. I know why it happens. I try to not let it bother me…just deal with it but this time it was hard. In a crit it’s easier to deal with. Go outside into the wind and get up near the front. Done. In a road race….ugh. Ben Dover.

"got you're whole fist up there doc? Is that a ring?"

I was pegged but felt OK…kind of….I guess… I felt in control but ten out of the blue at about 9 miles in I popped. Instantly and permanently. Usually if I pop I just rapid out the back, recover for a second and then I am back on it. This time it was like slow motion. It took forever to make my way back through the pack and then they hung out in front of me like a carrot for a while. It was sooooo demoralizing.

After review – coach says the following: “The reason you were popped is because your w/kg for aerobic efforts isn’t high enough. In other words, you need to lose the 10-15lbs and keep the power, or raise the power by a lot. You know this, but it will help hearing it from me.” It’s like telling a smoker that lighting up is going to kill him.

Soon after as I was thinking about the rest of the crappy ride to come I hear Richard Lenski come up on me. Myfirst thought was, “what the hell was he doing there?” He said he got put into a ditch early on. He’s in great form and really should have been in the mix. I latched on and helped for a few seconds before I realized I was not going to even be able to help him.

I bid him luck and at that time I noticed my man Carlos Flanders – AKA- Colm Flannery walking around on the side of the road. He wrecked last year so my first thought was that he had hit the deck again. Turns out he snapped his chain. I stopped and gave him my multi-tool with a chain tool on it, and reluctantly headed off again.

Soon I ended up in a decent sized group of OTB fodder. There was a junior in there who was fairly strong but was just really doing some iffy stuff. Going to the front and then sitting. Guttering us in the crosswind, etc. finally we all yelled and got a semblance of a line going. We made decent time and before we knew it we were back in town. I was climbing the early rises fairly well – dropping a lot of our group on each one. Then we hit the feed zone and the hill after.

Time for me to lose the extra 10-15. It’s killing me. My power is there but the weight has gone up. I watched the group slowly ride away from me on the climb. I got to bomb the hill and bricks at least. That’s my favorite parts. I tried to break 50 but fell short. I LOVE flying into that section and block hopping (that’s a new PSIMET term for taking a bunny hop that goes for a block at that speed) on to the different pavement sections.

As I came around the finish I was thinking – “30 more miles. alone…in the wind….” when I looked over and say the cat 5 and women’s 4 PSIMET crew sitting in the grass enjoying the sun. No brainer. my race was over. Let’s enjoy the day. I pulled off and soon saw that Lenski had pulled off as well.

I enjoyed watching everything else unfold. Joel Sprinted to a 6th place finish in the 3′s – only to be disqualified for yellow line violations. Scott held his own…literally…he held in his hernia to finish respectfully. amazing really considering how dehydrated and hungry he was as well.

In the 4′s finish i got to watch John Whipple win with authority. An amazing job by John for sure. He’s an animal in lycra and not long for the 4′s as we all knew last fall. I watched 2 others cross the line and then our own Tim Speciale. Turns out the other two were masters racers finishing up and Speciale was second on the 4′s. He got a brick. PSIMET was on the podium and it was done on a set of PSIMET carbon. Nice.

A brick to be had.

Apart from my performance it was a great day for PSIMET Racing –

Cat 4 Women:
Crystal louden – 27th <- first race ever! Nice job Crystal!

Cat 5 Men:
Arron Hampton – 6th place <- Nice job Arron!
Matt Cook – flat at mile 4. “DOH!”

Cat 4 Men:
Tim Speciale – 2nd – Brick
Raviv Wolfe – 8th (was originally DNF until we caught it and went back to “protest”)
Joe Berenyi – 38th
Kyle Tabor – 40th
Rob Curtis – one of the 26 DNF’s ugh.

Cat 3 Men:
Scott Knoepke – 43rd

This weekend we will all pile into some form of combined transportation and ferry several lycra clad urban wannabes to the land of my ancestors (well….my mothers side at least). We will then attempt to prove to ourselves that we don’t totally suck and all that food we ate during the Holidays has been sucessfully converted into hammers to be dropped at will as we stare at the farmlands of Southern Illinois.

Alas – it pains me to have the only real road race of size and importance at such an early time of the season. it sets such a massive tone of failure as you’re decimated by the 3-4 rising stars or still peaking cyclo-crossers as their last harrah. At least this year I know I am packing a bucket of suck up front. This will be a long training ride with a bib number on and a high pace to start with. No more. No less.

It will be good to see my people again – along with the opportunity to bask in the glorious sun….before I return to the truing stand – recharged and focused.

Ah…. Hillsboro….meh.