Monday, April 10, 2006

Tour LeFleur

Some weekends you've got it and then some weekends you don't. For me it was the latter. I misjudged everything. For me the weekend was "oh that break will come back" (it didn't), "this guy will bridge that gap" (he didn't), "these guys will go easy here and faster there" (so didn't), "they're racing for X" (they weren't racing for anything). So I take my lumps and look forward to the next race.

I crashed wicked hard on Saturday. Some yahoo, decided that he was tired of going fast and by the time I knew it I was up on his rear wheel rubbing it pretty hard. That's fine and all I don't have a problem with that, until someone else starts rubbing my wheel at the same time. So there I was trying to fend off two guys forcing my bike in two different directions, which of course means that I'm headed in a third which is right down to the ground. My question is why do people get pissed and start cursing when they crash? I'm calm about it. For me it's, ok let's check out all our body parts and make sure they are still there, then check out the machine, is it all together?

For me, the machine wasn't. I lost my Ksyrium front wheel. It was tacoed straight to hell, but on a brighter note, my tire didn't flat and I broke zero spokes. So it's safe to say that those are some good wheels. I went and took my five free laps, got a new wheel and put myself back in the race. It's a bad crit course and I strongly recommend for anyone who doesn't live in Jackson to not do the crit ever. You're wasting your time if you do. Thankfully for me it's a short drive and I had a lot of supporters out there yelling for me. And then later I had some very kind person take care of my road rash. Thank you for that.

The road race was equally disappointing, so I won't belabor anyone with that report. I'm just going to take my lumps and move on to the next race. My thing is, if you're team has 9 cat 1s in a race and my team has 5 cat 3s, don't ask us to chase down a break of 1s and 2s from a 3rd team for you. You've got the manpower to control a race and we've got the man power to be opportunistic. Go chase it down yourselves. My team did well at the road race, too bad I was so far back that I didn't get to see it. See earlier mention of gaps closing and breaks sticking.

Next Race: Miss. Grand Prix, Brookhaven.

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