News... What else?

Whats up? How's your summer going? Racing much?

Well I myself have been back at it again. A year that was not supposed to see any racing has probably seen more than i could have imagined and it doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. I just seem to jump into whatever is available that sounds fun, plus i am in good form lately so it helps to take advantage of any opportunities available. Plus racing is fun, especially when i am doing it rather than watching it!

Let me take you back to the past couple of weeks

July 24th, 2011 approximately 3:10am, my mother is waiting outside of pedalhead road works while i run inside to grab my front race wheel. We had just come from working a casino for my triathlon club (thanks mom!) and i needed to grab my wheel for the race coming up in about 5 hours... Kevin was set to pick me up at 4:30 am and then pick up our buddy and massage guru Lincoln and then race out to Sylvan lake for the half ironman. Clearly as you can tell by now we were doing the event as a team, and i was doing the 90km bike. What you may not realize is that after picking up my wheel, my mother dropped me off at home and i got my stuff ready and left. By the time i started the race, i was going on 24 hours straight without sleep. Something i had not done yet this year as i was actually trying to be somewhat serious about my racing.

I won't bore you with the details, but Lincoln led out of the swim, then i rode a 2:14:30 for the 90km bike without the transitions included and Kevin finished up for a half marathon with us taking the win in the race, the first team to ever win. But it was just good times, took a dip in the lake, checked out the "beach" and then had Dairy queen before driving home and me lying down at 5pm and sleeping until 7am the next morning, sweet.

The week after that was the Tour de Bowness

This was a good trip with Jama, Isa and I staying together and getting to race and hang out with our 3 other team mates: Bill, Steve, and Chris Coleman.

Drove down on friday right after i finished work at 6pm and got to our hotel in cochrane around 10pm after a long drive and we all just crashed out.

Got up the next day to nice weather, had a solid breakfast and headed to the road race area. I got caught by some psycho lady who worked for the gas station for pissing on a barbed wire fence and apparently she was pretty pissed herself... Needless to say i ducked my way out of there pretty quick and did not return.

Then the race started and well, Cat 4 were just dicking around... Our team was only three guys so we had no options to really put too much work in, but there were other teams that were a lot bigger and frankly didn't use their size to their advantage whatsoever. Apparently guys were looking out for me, but what they didn't realize is that sitting around for the first 44km lap played perfectly into my hands. The pace didn't ramp up until i got to the front and started to hammer a bit, but i took a good chunk of turns in the front on the first lap too. So i got on the front and pushed it a bit while there was two guys off the front. I asked for someone else to pull and he said no cause he had a guy in front. I was like dude he is getting caught, lets string this out, but he had not interest. So when i pulled those guys in he went on the attack. I figured this guy was not cool and not getting away so i chased him, then one other guy caught on but i dropped them both on a hill and they got swallowed up by the pack.

I went on as hard as i could solo because i knew that our group screwing around allowed the cat 5 group to catch up and if they did catch the pack they would neutralize them. I had an ace up my sleeve. So i hammered to the turn around and then straight back into the head wind and they did get neutralized and i got a 2 min lead. They slowly widdled it down, but i was in control the whole way to take a solo win by around 40 seconds. Sweet. I headed straight to the porta potty to piss cause i was holding it since 10km in. Isa finished 5th in cat 4 and Jama was 4th in cat 5. Solid day.

We went out that night to hudsons downtown in Calgary and partied a bit, i had anywhere between 2-8 rye and cokes and we got home around 3am. But the hill climb was not until 6pm so we knew we were good.

Got up, had breakfast, spin for an hour with Isa, and then starbucks. Lunch, stretch, drink, then head to hill climb. Got there early for a recon ride, looked hard but i figured just kill it as hard as you could and it would be fine.

I was put with the guys that were 2nd and 3rd in the RR the day before and I wanted to hit them hard out of the gate so they got no draft and blew up and hopefully got no points... It worked and i put at least 15 seconds into them straight away. Won the hill climb and led in points, now its all down to the crit for the GC. Jama was second in his hill climb.

Jama was our direction man for the crit, but somehow he read the directions backwards and we ended up at the airport rather than the crit, so i took the reigns and we had only 20 mins to get Jama back to bowness for the crit on time. We sped through Calgary and jumped out at the road closure to do a nascar stop and get him off towards the start. He made it with only 30 seconds to spare. I nearly shit myself.

Jama held solid in his race and he ended up finishing 3rd in the crit and good for 3rd overall in the omnium.

Coleman, Steve, Isa and myself had discussed tactics to keep my lead safe for the crit, but all that went out the window pretty much straight away as the only ones strong enough to stay at the front for an extended period were Isa and Myself. Coleman and Steve definitely tried to help but it was so fast and surgey that it was really hard to control. I just ended up staying on the front as much as possible to stay safe and be in good position. I attacked with 4 laps to go, but the entire pack was not letting me go anywhere, i was a marked man. I ended up going into the last corner in 2nd place and ended up sprinting to 9th. Which was exactly what i wanted to do, i stayed safe on the last corner and had good position because i know i can't sprint.

In the end i did enough to stay in 1st for the Omnium GC and with my hill climb results got into Cat 3. Isa finished 4th in the Crit and was able to get into Cat 3 as well. Road racing is now done for me for the year, time to focus on what is really important and what is actually my real focus, TRIATHLON! Nationals are now only 19 days away and i need to get my shit together, specifically my swim.

Headed to Waskesui this weekend to race the Frank Dunn toyota triathlon as a tune up race, wish me luck.

Photo's from the weekend soon to follow.

I will leave you with our pump up song from the weekend



cheers,