End of Season Road Race.

I woke up the ungodly hour of 5am this morning. There were people sleeping on the floor in my common room, who I'm sure I woke up with all my banging around of the microwave and stirring of my protein drink. At first I thought it was one of my roommates sleeping with some random girl, but then I remembered that my room mate was having his friends from Denver come down to stay the night. It was weird.

...Back to the reporting of races.

It was cold in Deer Trail at the start of the race; there was a lingering fog which made the winds feel even colder. Despite using the bathroom three times within the hour before the race, at five miles in realized I had to pee really bad. The chip seal roads made this predicament worse. I wasn't sure whether to try and tough it out, to pee off the back, or pee all over my leg and try to wash it off with my water bottle. I ruled out peeing while riding because I had a disastrous image of myself attempting this maneuver and crashing while urinating. The "pee my pants" option was nixed because I'm not getting paid enough to something like that. Needless to say, I decided to hold it.

The pace was really slow for the first half of the race. One rider broke away for ten miles, but we caught him when we turned out of the wind. Just about ten miles from the finish there were ten guys in the front group, including me. At the turn around point, 3 miles from the finish, there were eight. That got whittled down to five people on the rolling hills, and at 1k to go the fifth guy was also dropped.

Going into the finish there was a short hill, and I was on the side with the wind. I thought about filtering around the back to set myself up for the sprint, but I decided to make my position work instead of potentially wasting more energy. In the end the race came down to a short sprint. I didn't have the response needed. I did manage a respectable 4th place, which is my best finish yet. I should have place on the podium, but shit happens. One through four was so close we all received the same time, 1:55.

My friend from school, Kate, who I went to the race with killed the competition in her field by finishing somewhere around 800 miles ahead of the next rider... Quite a feat for a 42 mile road race.

Her prize for winning was a beer mug and bottles of cerveza. I'm not sure if the volunteer knew he was giving alcoholic beverages to minors, but we took the booty anyway. It was a laugh, and she made a conscious effort to avoid getting pulled over with contraband in the car.


Sorry, no pictures.