Sweet Home Arkansas

Since I haven’t posted in over a week, this post is going to be way too long. I’m writing it while sitting in the passenger seat while Guptil is taking a pull at the wheel on our Drive back from Fayetteville, Arkansas. So fill up you coffee cup with some bean juice or some yerba mate because this one’ll take while.

The last time I blogged, I was in the middle of the Tour de Gila preparing to race stage four, the crit, with thoughts of stage five rattling around in the back of my mind. I felt great in the crit, so I decided to try to get into a break. I tried to a couple of times; my first attempt was when I saw Mike Dietrich from Sierra-Nevada go up the road. I jumped on that but it didn’t stick. I made another attempt when Jon Tarkinton from Vitamin Cottage attacked; I knew that was a good wheel to follow due to his recent dominance in the Front Range races and reputation as a strong crit tactician. We were able to escape from the group with a couple of TIAA-Cref guys and a couple Successful Living guys. It was good to be up in the break, and I really wanted it to stick so I was driving it probably a bit too hard. The Cref and Successful Living guys were barely taking any pulls, which was a little frustrating. We were out there for most of the race and caught with about eight laps to go. Rashaan Bahati from Cref took the W from Gord who celebrated a little too early.

Before and after the race I got together with the infamous Dr. Frank, the chiropractor of the best pros in Durango. He’s becoming widely known in the world for his research and development of SRA (Spinal Reflex Analysis). The technique that he’s developed is amazing. After the crit, my body was worked, but after Dr. Frank worked on me, I felt like I hadn’t even raced at all. Check his website at http://www.spinalreflex.com/.

The final stage of the Gila was epic. We had about four major climbs to total about 10,000 feet of climbing in about 100 miles. Coming into the first climb, the field had about 100 guys in it. By the time we got over the top the field had already thinned down to about 40 guys. The second climb was the same road, only the other direction and slightly steeper. Once again this split the field in half and only about 20 of us were left. There was one more long and steep climb and this caused about five more guys to pop. We were about 80 miles into the race by this point and the legs were really screaming. I made it over this climb with the lead group, but I finally cracked with about 8 miles to go on the final rollers to the finish. I still managed a decent result and moved way up in GC. Our team made out really well with Colby taking 4th, Guptil 14th, and me in 18th in GC.

After Gila, I spent a couple days in Durango unwinding, then made the 15 hour journey out to Arkansas, my birthplace. We had a solid team at the Joe Martin stage race. It was great to see my teammates, mechanic, and director again. I got to experience having a suanier for the first time, which made recovery so much better. You can’t beat gettin’ a massage after every stage. And Janis made a mean PB and banana sandwich.

The racing in Arkansas was actually pretty damn hard. I don’t know what the promoter was thinking, but he decided to combine the Pros and 1s with 2s, which made for a field of about 215 guys… Way too big! So riding near the front was really important, to avoid gaps and crashes. The pace wasn’t too hard until the one major climb of the course. Unfortunately for me, I was taken out in a crash at the base of the climb when the two guys in front of me locked bars. By the time I got up and on the spare bike I had lost too much time and wasn’t able to catch back up by the top of the climb. At that point, there was no way I was going to be able to catch the group on my own. I caught a small chase group, and then was swept up by a large chase group. I was pretty frustrated with the group because no one was willing to work, and the group was large enough that we could’ve possibly caught up if everyone would’ve taken pulls. So I lost a lot of time in the first stage, which knocked me way out of GC.

The next day was a double day; road race in the morning and TT in the evening. The road race felt little harder then the previous day, but maybe that was just because my legs were just a little more trashed. The TT went alright, but I felt like I could’ve gone a lot harder. The Crit was the final day, and was the hardest crit I’ve ever done. It had a lot of high speed corners, wind, and a steep climb that absolutely punished the legs every lap.

The team ended up doing really well again with four of us in the top forty in GC, with Colby as the top rider in 5th.

I'm back on the road now returning to D-town for the next week and a half. The next block of races will start on the east coast with Captech, Bikejam, and Summerville leading into Philly week. Then I’m off to Minnesota for the Nature Valley Grand Prix, then back to east coast for the Saturn Rochester Crit, then Fitzburg stage race, then possibly Cascade. For the next week and a half I’m going to recharge the batteries a little in Durango and should be ready to hit all these races with good form.