As the crank turns… tales of life on the rims

Hillsboro Recap

....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:

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.

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.

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.

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