Monday, July 16, 2007

Longmont Criterium and such

Well been a busy guy the past few weeks. After the Firecracker 50 I took a much needed couple of days off, went for a recovery ride 2 days later and still felt horrible. Ive never had such a hard time recovering after a race, I can only imagine what those endurance MTBikers go through. Anywho I have been still riding the mountain bike a lot, and the only time I have been riding my road bike is to work and back and stuff. Ive found the MTB training I have been doing has definately helped my endurance in races, and really giving me more solid base. I went out with a guy from work who is a semi-pro and did about 4.5 hours race pace style training in the foothills near my house. It was hard, really hard, but a good thing for sure.
I raced in the Longmont Crit on Sunday. It didn't go to well, I had a pretty bad position from the start and moving up in that field was a harder task than expected. There were lots of 90 degree turns and not much time to move up if you wanted to. There was a crash about 35 minutes in, that a lot of people were involved in. I had to unclip to avoid it, and decided to use my free lap. I did so, and the pace seemed to be even faster than before the crash. So I finished in a chase group, and that was it. I was pretty dissappointed in myself, but we have good and bad days I suppose.
I hope everybody has been watching the tour, it has been pretty exciting thus far. Its so hard to say who might pull away in this one. I thought Vino had a chance, but its gonna be hard on him for the next few weeks. My wildcard right now is Iban Mayo, he looked super strong yesterday, and he could do it! But who knows, its wide open at this point. Anywho, I'm off to get some sleep, tuesday night crit tomorrow! There are some new songs for all you folk to check out as well, take a look!

Friday, July 06, 2007

Firecracker 50

I knew it was gonna hurt, and it did, really bad. With the combination of lots of climbing technical climbing and really steep elevation, it was a hard race. I had to do 2 laps of a 25 mile course. The first part of the race went really well, and I was feeling better than I ever have in a mountain bike race for sure. Then about 20 miles in I crashed, it wasn't too bad, bike came out from under me a little bit, and I just jumped back on and tried to chase back to the group I was with. I made it back to them then I managed to crash again, this time a little worse. I chased back to the group again, and I could see the lap marker up ahead, in which case we had roughly another 25 to go. Then thats when I crashed really hard, and it wasn't one that I could just get up and keep going. While I was descending on a jeep trail I took a really bad line and ended up over the bars and onto some rocks and gravel. Lets just say I had to sit there and collect myself for a few minutes then I got back on my bike went through the finish line and decided that one lap was enough. I HATE not finishing races, but I knew I needed to throw in the towel. I watched Jay Henry of Tokyo Joe's smoke everybody and finish at least 5 minutes ahead of the second place guy which was Ryan Trebon. Overall it was a fun race and I would totally do it again in a heartbeat. A much longer race probably doesn't suit a rider like myself but, it would be a good workout, and something to work towards. Thanks for checking in...check out the new songs on my pod

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

This is gonna hurt...

I'm doing the Firecracker 50 today...its gonna hurt