photo by jill henryAs i said in my last post the week started with me finding a crack in my trusty ol cannondale caad4 frame on monday. i still haven't had time to process this loss and a memorial post will come but i was scrambling. I've learned the hard way that something always seems to happen when i preregister so i usually don't but of course i was already registered for the Masters 3/4 race. By wed. night, thanks to Tom Sena, I was able to borrow a Felt so i could at least ride but there was no way i was going to race that bike for fear of crashing it. I would have ridden the whole race 50 feet off the back.
So after calling all the shops i knew, sending out emails to the team and anyone else i knew, I was able to aquire an 06 Madone 5.2 frame for a very nice price (thanks Karl!). Because i trusted who it came from i bought it sight unseen. I was told it wasn't ridden very much but when it was delivered to my house Sat it looked brand new. beautiful.
Early sat. morning i had stripped the Cannondale frame. After lunch i went to the pool with the family. Then about 3pm i was able to start building the Trek. At about 4pm i went to mount the brakes and found that the nuts i had to mount them with were to short for the front and the rear brakes. I started calling all the trek dealers i could think of and not until i called Village Cyclesport did i get the answer i was hoping for. I talked to Brian and he said they had the bolts and that they closed in 45min. I threw the brakes and the frame in the trunk of my car and made the 45min trip in 30 min. once inside Brian helped me get the right nuts and i was back in the car on my way to church to meet my family that i had abandonded so quickly.
After getting home from church and putting kids to bed i resumed assembling the bike. This included "borrowing" the front deralier from the borrowed Felt since mine was a clamp on and i needed a braze on. At around 11:30pm i called it a night. I had the bike together and had ridden it up and down the block a few times (another complete story in itself since it involved a neighbors call to 911 and 4 police cars on our street) to make sure that everything was ok and decided to go to bed.
The following morning was actually quite normal for a race morning. Got up, ate, packed, and headed out.
The Actual Race Report
We came into this race pretty confident. Tim had placed 2nd last week at Chicago and we were again going to have a pretty decent number of riders in this race. Personally i was ready to try something. In almost every race this year i've been on the front and responded to an attack and then once i'm in it i've held back cause i wanted to save myself. I went in to this race thinking that if i go, i'm gonna give it everything. We had plenty of other teammates to respond if i failed.
So the race starts and right away there's a prime. While i didn't contend for the prime i stayed at the front and kept myself in a great position where i could see tim easily grab the prime. Sometime on the next lap or 2 Andy Powel took a flyer. After 1 or 2 more primes were called i found tim and told him, that after the next prime i was gonna give it a go. So now they call the $100 prime and the pace picks up. I keep my place towards the front of the field and just follow wheels. Staying towards the front but trying not to spend too much energy. As soon as we come up to the line i nail it. There were probably 5 or 6 guys who had fought for the prime that i had to go around but after that i was off.
My intent was to catch the field napping right after a prime since usually everyone takes it easy for a bit after the prime sprint. That plan was good for about 5 seconds until they announced that this was going to be another prime lap. Actually when i heard this i wasn't too happy. My intention was to go for the win or at least make the other teams work, not the prime. I figured that attacking right after a prime would give me a bit of an advantage while the field recovered and tried to figure out where i went. So much for that.
Even so i still was able to get quite a sizeable gap. I didn't hear how much the prime was for but as i completed the lap i knew i won it and kept going. As i came back by the start finish i heard the announcer say $200 and a smile crossed my face.
Finishing lap 2 of my breakaway there were 2 laps remaining in the race. In my head i was saying "ok, i'm half way there. 2 laps down, 2 to go." But the field had woken up and were closing in. I saw that a couple guys were trying to bridge but they didn't have that much of a lead over the field and sure enough after almost 2 1/2 laps on my own, i was caught. But again the beauty of having a great strong team is that as soon as i was caught, Kevin blasted up the left side and attacked.
As i drifted back thru the field i wanted to make sure and finish with the main group. For the last lap and a half the conversation in my head was, "yeah you can move up, no you're shot." On the last lap I was near the back of the field but as we came thru turn 2, the only right turn, i shot up the left side and before the next turn made it to the front. I started to get excited about being able to say i placed and did a solo break but as everybody ramped it up for the final 500m i found that i had nothing left. As i came up on 200m to go i heard the race announcer saying "Project 5" and i knew tim had won. I clapped and pumped my fist as i crossed the line in 52nd place. 52nd never felt so good.
I can't think of a race where i've had more fun or a race where a team has done such a great job. It's been fun watching the videos cause in every one of them you hear the announcer say, "Project 5."
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