This will be slightly abbreviated because a week has already passed and I don’t really care that much about it. (Okay, after I finished writing I realized it wasn’t too abbreviated. I guess I got caught up in the excitement again.)
My first impression of the weekend was crap. I went in expecting to sweep the omnium and that’s what I told myself the whole time. I didn’t win a single race. I took “2nd,” 4th, and 3rd. Race morning Saturday was wet and still raining a little bit. The registration table seemed chaotic and attendance looked small for a race. The time trials were supposed to start at 8:30 and my start time was 8:42:30. As time progressed, it didn’t seem like there was any chance that they were going to start on time which is about when they announced that the TT would be moved back to 8:45. Okay, sweet. That means the start times are moved back 15 minutes so I should start around 8:57. Wrong. While I was waiting in line for the porta-potty and frantically trying to pin my number to my jersey, my start time came and went. I made it to the start line over five minutes late. My new start time was moved to 8:46; however, I was never informed of this. I knew I was starting behind so I thought I could just make up some time. That led to me hitting it hard out of the gate. Not the best idea either. Since I was rushed, I never warmed up. My legs have never felt so heavy in my life. The whole thing was painful and I never got into a groove. I pulled off a 27:09 for an average of 22.5mph over the 10 mile out and back course. If that was the time that actually had been recorded for me, then I would have finished 2nd. (Not only in C’s, but overall since turnout was low that morning for the ITT.)
Later that afternoon was the crit where I thought I stood the best chance for a win. However, stupid us waiting for another teammate to get ready, we missed the start of this race too. We saw the peloton coming over the hill while we were riding to the start line. The race official confirmed it was the Men’s C group and let us pull a quick 180 to jump in. That is of course after we chased them down over the first mile. Just another huge effort on cold legs to start the race. No big deal. Since the course was a 3.5 mile loop, we were only set to do five laps for the 40 minute race. For some reason my stupid self thought it would be a good idea to pull the entire second lap. This ended with me going straight through the back of the field as we hit the climb to the finish to start lap 3. I never recovered from this like I thought I could on the descents. I put in some good efforts and almost bridged the gap with another rider on my wheel early in lap four. When we got close to the break, there was some miscommunication and he jumped on an attack to bridge and left me behind. More work for me. I kept at it although I never really expected to catch the front break. I guess I pulled back enough riders as they fell off because I finished fourth. Oh, and I overtook and outsprinted the guy that I had drug back to the group in lap four.
So going into Sunday’s road race, I wasn’t feeling too excited or expecting too much from my performance. The course was supposed to be hilly and would probably have some breaks. I was fine with just getting out there and riding the two lap 37 mile course. On a positive note, I did make the start line for this race. About 3 miles into the race, one rider went off the front, how stupid. We let him bleed. Then about 9 miles into lap one, a break started to go. Sitting middle of the pack, I was not with the break, but I was able to see it go. I was determined to make it. A shallow decent allowed me to launch a huge effort and fly pass the other riders strung along the course. I made the break consisting of 6 riders represented by 6 different teams. It felt good. As we rolled through the pace line, I guess I took too big of a pull in my excitement because as we rolled through the next hill, I fell off the back. Damn it, Matt, you did it again. I was stuck in no man’s land for a few miles with the group in my sight but still out of reach. I was suffering, but knew that I had to bridge the gap again; otherwise, the race was over. I hammered and eventually made it back on. Now I’m two big efforts in on the race and still 20 miles to go. The group stuck together from this point on and kept rolling through the pace line. Race official told us we had 4 minutes on the peloton with about 9 miles to go in the race, so the winner would be in this group. I was starting to like my chances. Over the last 5 to 6 miles, we started picking up the pace. Riders started making attacks in the last two miles. Each blip in the road was a new launching point. It was starting to hurt. I wasn’t positioned very well heading into the 90 degree right hand turn 150 meters out from the finish, but I thought if I took the outside line and launched my sprint appropriately things could work out. I got bumped way to the outside in the corner and came out of it in 5th place or so. The rider leading into the corner had a great line and came out over 20 feet in front of me. I still gave it a shot, but the legs didn’t feel too great. I came up beside the guy that took second, but couldn’t overtake him. I finished with 3rd. (race results)
Overall spring break was really good to me. More sleep, no stress from school, and more time to ride left me with a four pound weight loss for the week. On top of that and the races, I got to go camping in Alabama and get some training done on the ITU Worlds course.
The dichotomic following weekend:
Saturday I had probably my best training day of the year. I had a really hard bike and pretty impressive run following it. Everything here has hills so I have to take that into consideration when I compare times and splits to previous years that I trained solely on the flatlands of Memphis. So when I pulled a 20.4 mph average 55.5 miles on the road with 5 intervals of 4 minutes into the pain and lactate threshold with my heart rate above 170 with 3 minutes recovery each set and followed it with a four mile run averaging 7:42 with four decent hills and the last mile being the fastest even with my VMO’s cramping, I was pretty satisfied. After when I was relaxing I could feel the work and damage my legs had undergone. It was a very rewarding and satisfying exhaustion.
The rest of the weekend didn’t go quite so well. I got stood up Saturday night which was so much fun and then my Sunday workout turned to crap. I was determined to make it a great one on Raccoon Mountain with an off-road brick, but God had other plans. My first lap was going fine until I passed my first guy at about 9 miles into the ride. I immediately burped my front tire on a rocky section which made me feel really cool. The Stan’s sealed up nicely, but I still stopped and put some air back into it. I continued on. I came out to a really rocky section next to the dam. Not being familiar with the trail and just blazing through, I decided to just hit it hard right in the middle. Why not, right? It was a three step rock drop-off of considerable size. It was the only line I saw as I approached it. As I dropped off the first rock, things went straight downhill: my front wheel turned and got stuck on some rocks, I endo’ed, I banged my left elbow and knee, I could now hear air screaming out of my front tire, and as I looked up from the ground, I caught my bike as it came the rest of the way down the rock. I had a little gash on my elbow, my pre-patella bursa was swelling quickly, and I had ripped a hole in the sidewall of the tire. I had had such good luck with all my equipment and now that I am away from my shop all hell is breaking loose. It really makes me miss Outdoors Inc. I flipped the bike upside down and started to put my spare tube in. The tube has a hole of course. So I begin to walk it out. I don’t know how many miles back it was, at least two. I figured someone would pass me once I made it back to the road and give me a ride back to my car; I wasn’t so lucky. Halfway along the road, I was tired of walking in my carbon fiber shoes and messing them up so I decided to take them off. While that might have spared them some damage, it left me with a nice blister on my right heel which would keep me from doing any running once I made it back to my car. I don’t remember the last time I flatted and had to walk out of a trail, but I know the last time I had to walk my bike because of a mechanical issue was on this exact same road. After the time trial at the River Gorge Omnium, my crank arm fell off and I had to walk halfway back to my car before someone picked me up on this same road around the reservoir on top of Raccoon Mountain. The only other time I’ve tried to ride this trail was on my birthday last year. Only a few miles in and I took a descending corner too fast and tweaked my right knee (which has undergone three previous surgeries). We didn’t finish the ride that day either. You can say I am not a fan of this trail. But then again why shouldn’t this have happened? I would be greedy to expect two good workouts in back to back days.
