This past weekend Vic, Karim and I participated in the nationals at Downers.  For me, this was a first time experience.  One word summation – Wow.  An incredible event put on in perfect fashion in a beautiful suburb of Chicago.  And the weather?  Equally perfect.  Big crowds, festive atmosphere, real barricades along the whole start/finish stretch – big time event, for sure.

Vic and I started the weekend with schedule racing on Saturday, he in the Pro-Am Cat 1/2 event, I in the Masters 30+, 40+ Cat 1/2/3.  My race had 135+ riders and was silly fast – the HRM clocked an average of 27.9 mph.  I’m glad the race was just 40 mins in length.  I had a good starting position and was able to maintain a top 10 position throughout most of the race.  Although it was easy to lose 20-30 places in a turn, I found it could be made up as easily in the turns and straights.  With 2 laps to go, I found myself lying in 3rd as we crossed the line (surprising my teammates for some reason!).  Alas, I was unable to hold that position as we continued and on the last lap I was gapped from the front 20 due to a crash that diverted my attention, but should not have slowed me down.  I crossed the finish in 26th place – I’ll take it for my debut Downers event.  Vic’s Pro-Am event?  I didn’t stick around for the finish (and neither did he), but I saw enough to know that it was used by many pros as a tuner for the next days national championship event and it was ridiculously fast.

Sunday brought the Cat 2 Challenge for Vic & I, and the Elite National Amateur Championship event for Karim.  The Cat 2 race was first in order for the day and had 100+ riders.  We had good starting positions and maintained this throughout the first half of the event, but our concerns of tired legs in the warm up came true as we faded toward the end.  A clean (no crashes), fast race that came to a bunch sprint with I in 40th and Vic in 60th.  My objectives were met – stay upright, finish, and have a good time.  Next year will be different.

The elite mens amateur event had a huge field of 180 riders.  A call up of past winners and former pros prior to the start had me more nervous then my teammate who was in the race.  Man, this thing was going to be sick fast and long (80KM).  Karim had a good start position, considering the numbers, and rode conservatively during the first half of the race, checking out the competition’s back 90 riders.  Some fortuitous crashes and veteran nerve saw him quickly move up into top 25 during the 2nd half of the race.  I had a chance to walk the entire course during the event and was literally blown away by the field going by.  The amount of turbulence that 180 riders going by at 30+ mph UPHILL is amazing.  With 8 laps to go, six Team Bianchi/Grandperformance riders went miraculously from tail-gunning the entire race to lead out train, ramping the speeds to a blur, but unable to hold it for their sprint man.  Some dude covered in tatoos won (never heard of him) by handily beating ex-pro Steve Tilford (46yrs old!) and one of the remaining Bianchi guys.  Our guy Karim ended up 50th.  Not bad, I’d say, given the speed, crashes every other lap near the end, and having a gazillion riders in the field.

All in all, a great weekend and one to certainly put on the calendar, either as a participant or spectator.  See you there next year, for sure!

 – Chris

Racing, for me (and John, Patrick and Bob), started with racing at the velodrome on Saturday night. Great weather, and decent competition – due to the fact that it was the special Bike Wave/Lightspeed night – were on tap for the evening. Tortuga was represented well in all of the races in both categories. Bob continued to show his strength and was a force to be reckoned with as the lone Tortugan in the Cat. 3’s. In the Pro, 1, 2 events, our plan for the (world’s worst track event) 12-lap snowball race worked out perfectly. I covered the early shit, Patrick went hard around 5 laps into it, setting up John for a handful of solo laps off the front to earn him plenty of points for the victory. Although neither John nor I did Patrick complete justice in the miss-n-out – he sat at the front and dragged us around for more than half of the race, keeping us out of harms way – I was able to squeek out 4th place (however I got screwed by some questionable riding by the winner of the race and even more questionable calls from the officiating crew.) And last, but certainly not least, the final event of the evening, the 42-lap points race, went Tortuga’s way as well. Although John and I planned on riding for Patrick (who more than deserves it), I found myself in a break for a while gaining points. After we were caught, I couldn’t just pull out early (as I intended to do), so I continued sprinting for points and ended up 2nd – John was 3rd and Patrick was 5th.

Not much to say about the Cat 1-2-3 Bloomington race (Ren-Jay Shei impressively won the 4-5 race, though!) Perhaps our expectations were too high. We certainly had the numbers and the right set of circumstances to do much better than we did. We did score 5 people in the top-20 for series points, but we still wound up in 3rd place overall. Oh well. We may not have won the war, but I think there are still quite a few other battles that we will win this season.

My weekend of racing culminated with the 82.5-mile Indiana State Road Race Championships. The race was supposed to be somewhere around 92-96 miles, but last minute course changes and a smaller-than-expected field size pared the race down to a slightly-more managable distance. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I scored the victory for the 1-2-3 field in the race. And while I immediately called my right-hand man in the peleton (Karim) to gloat a bit about my good fortunes, my emotional high has worn off a bit and I need to qualify the victory by saying that there are several factors that enabled me to do well enough in the one event of my 3-day weekend of racing where I least expected a good performance. First, the field size was small. I think there were less than a dozen 1-2’s signed up. This was no doubt because the original distance of the race probably turned a lot of people off from coming – that coupled with a hard race the night before in Bloomington and a modest prize list. Second, the promoter wisely decided to combine the 3’s field with our 1-2-3 field and shorten the race by one lap. At least we were able to spend 4 hours in the saddle in a decent sized group. Third, by altering the orginal course (I understand that Hamilton County didn’t want the race to come through a blind corner in a particular intersection), all but one of the hills were effectively eliminated from the race. The race was looking better and better for me as the morning went on. Fourth, the first 41 miles of the race were, in my opinion, basically a warm-up. We weren’t going too hard, as we were passed by the 4-5’s field on their last lap. There were some fruitless attacks here and there, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that this thing was going to come down to a field sprint. The course was just too flat, and a majority of the guys in the race still had enough left in their reserves to let anything go away permentently. I sensed this, so besides one hard effort to jump up to a small break, I was mostly sitting in and letting the other teams do all of the work – and when I was on the front, I was just floating. Prior to the race, I decided that the best thing for me to do was to play survival. I hadn’t done more than 80-miles since my preseason training in Texas, so I wasn’t even expecting to finish the race. The pace picked up during the second half of the race, and still nothing was getting away. With 2-3 laps to go, I was happy to see Tom Cox drop out of the race – because of a couple of wheel mishaps he had no choice but to retire. He was going to be one of the few that I was going to keep an eye on in the finish. Everything was looking up for me and my chances now. Morris Trucking and the 3 Zipp guys had the numbers, so I figured I be looking for their lead-out trains in the drag race to the line. The home stretch was almost a mile long, and from the last corner, you could practically see the finish. I’ve ridding these types of finishes enough to know that there would be plenty of riders going way too early and losing steam long before they got close to the line. The pace was pretty frantic once we came out of the last turn. I made sure I was in the top-5 coming out of that turn so I wouldn’t be caught up in the melee that ensued behind. I jumped from one expected surge to another, careful not to show my face to the wind until we got close enough to the line. I think I heard a few shouts from behind for me (specifically) to “go now!” Not sure what that was all about – I’ll go when I’m good and ready. I couldn’t wait any longer, and by the looks of it (maybe 300-400 meters?), I figured I could hold a sprint for the rest of the way. I jumped hard to my left and gapped the field pretty well and was able to hold off a late charge by one of the Morris Trucking guys. Had the line been about 10 meters further, I probaly would have been pipped (I won by less than a 1/2 wheel length.) On the other hand, had I waited any longer, there’s probably a good chance someone else would have gotten the jump on the field and I may have been hard pressed to come from behind. Anyhow, a “trackie” won the State Road Race Championships – ALL of the cards fell into place for that. On another positive note, if you weren’t already aware, we (Tortuga) won the 4-5 and masters race as well.

Looking forward to the Fast Crit this coming weekend. Smooth and flat, no corners and 1-hour long – some “purists” don’t call it much of a race – but I say to heck with them. These same haters are the ones who aren’t man enough to show up at the track to prove their mettle. No matter what the course is, you still have to prove who’s the fastest and the most savvy to score the “V.” I’ll see you there.

Vic, Sean, Chris, and I represented the team at the Woodlawn Criterium (held in Cincinnati, OH).  The course was decent (4 corners with mild inclines).  Weather was very muggy and hot (95 degrees for a 5 PM race – now that’s silly hot at that time of the day).

The pre-race prep started off (as usual) with one simple question (directed at my trusted coach/true love): “what’s the goal?” – – “win daddy” replies my 3 year old daughter Lena.  There you go.  Top 5 it is then.    I made a cardinal sin the morning of the race – I broke my routine.  Instead of having my usual bowl of cereal and fruit leading up to a race – I decided to have the mother of all breakfast burritos at the Village Deli (a Bloomington institution).  Bad move indeed.  By the time 2 PM rolled around – I was stopping every 10-15 minutes to “drop the kids off at the pool”.  I was suffering from a bat bout diarrhea (the explosive variety).  This was further compounded by a very hot day and only two days of riding the week before (due to business travel).  This was going to be a long 60 minutes in the saddle.

Although the field was not large, notable regional teams were represented (i.e. Nuvo/Bacardi, Mesa, TX RH).    Off we go.  All rode well covering moves in the beginning with Vic doing a great job closing a serious gap that split the field in half at one point.  Meanwhile, I was in the middle to rear of the pack trying to keep my burrito and other matter from spilling on the road.  As soon as I started feeling somewhat better, I began moving to the front.  As I was doing this, a move including Busa, Doyle, and Braumberger went off the front (with about 30-40 minutes left in the race).  This was my ticket.  I jumped on, and we cleared the field.  About 15 minutes later, 6 guys rolled up to us (with Sean in tow – beautiful).  The break is now 10 men deep (all the money is up the road with all major teams represented – the field has shut down).  Due to the mesmerizing heat, the speed was not very fast throughout the race.  What did not feel all that great were the constant yo-yo attacks/accelerations.  Once such attack (by Busa of TX RH) – caused a split in the break.  At this point, I was starting to feel crappy again (literally).  Luckily, Sean saved the day by riding tempo at the front – allowing me to get back in the winning move.  This series of movements unfortunately shelled Sean (although he gets the award of the day for selfless riding).  If it was not for Sean’s efforts, I would have probably pulled out of the race and ridden straight into the men’s room for another pit stop.  The break is now 7 men deep (Doyle, two TX RH, a Mesa rider, myself and two others).  Busa attacks (with about 15 minutes to go) with Mesa in tow.  Knowing that Braumberger and Doyle were the most dangerous, I stayed back (in retrospect I should have gone with this move).  This led to a slow and painful cat-mouse game that resulted in the two guys getting away with Mesa winning.  I sprinted in for 4^th  (losing 3^rd by a 1/3 of a wheel to Braumberger of TX RH).  Vic was able to break clear of the field near the end (with Rich D of Nuvo/Bacardi) and won his sprint for a solid 8^th place finish.  Chris finished off the rest of the field with a solid sprint for 11^th.  All in all, not a bad day at all (when considering the circumstances).  We are progressing nicely as a new team.  Next show will be held in Zionsville, IN.  Stay tuned!

 

Man-up or get out of the way,

 

Karim