Racing Again ......

Man, when races come and go I really miss them. Now I know why I am so addicted. I f'ing love it. Win, 8th place, 21st...Whatever, I'm in. This past weekend Seabass, Neal and I headed down to Coldspring Texas for some. We left Friday an hour late cause Seabass is always late. Headed down to Huntsville where we checked into out shitty La Quinta right across the street from the clink. Ya, Huntsville State Prison is a hell hole. Don't go there. I'm serious. You will not like it. You don't get treated well in prison and this one is even worse. After a glass of Kroger's finest Cabernet it was off to sleep for an early morning. 5:15am early. We headed to Coldspring in the morning light following other cars with race bikes on racks. Its eaiser than getting directions. To spare you with all the details the race was nice. Good roads and some good climbing. We rolled out, about 55 riders and it was typical attack here, attack there but nothing sticking. The San Jose guys basically stayed up front and covered all attacks so I just laid back and tried to maintain a top 15 position in the pack. It was 3 16mile loops and on the 2nd we were heading up a climb and I heard the normal sound of spokes breaking and carbon scraping the cement. Not a fun noise. 'bout 8 riders went down. This broke up the field a bit. On the last lap we were rolling pretty good and there is a right turn that heads to the finish line which everyone was positioning themselves for. After the turn it was about 4 miles to the finishline and needless to say the hammers were down. Neal and I worked our way up front and held our ground. We were coming up on the finishline which is a 8% grade for about 1000 meters. Ouch. Not a fun place to sprint. Neal jumped first, way to early and this started the sprint way out. Neal cracked and went off the the side. I proceeded to hammer it out begging my legs to keep going. I held one San Jose guys wheel, jumped to get him but to no avail. All in all I think I got 10th. Not terrible since I was sick for a week and a half before. Sunday I rode 5 hours on soar legs so I think I got me some good fitness in this weekend.

Until the next race.....3 weeks to go.....

j