Camp and Webster Crit

Last week I went to La Crosse Wisconsin for a regional development camp. The days were full of classes and riding. The main reason I wanted to go is because of the emphasis USA Cycling places on them to get into the athlete development pipeline. On the first day we started the day doing drills in a parking lot that that emphasized handling skills. Shortly after we rolled out of town and hit a 1.5-2.5 mile climb. We were paced up the hill by the lead vehicle and pretty soon it was down to three of us. The other two riders were there Alex Meyer, a cat. 2 form Milwaukee, and Luke Lininger. I was nervous prior to the climb because I didn't know my form compared to them. As we grinded up the climb I looked around to see I was the only one left. It was a good sign for the rest of the week and took alot of pressure off my shoulders for team selections. The picture at the right is the climb we did, the road goes left and climbs the side of the bluff. The typical schedule involved waking up and riding, going back to the dorm to eat lunch, then suiting up again for the days second ride. Each night we did classes including stuff on cyclocross, track, bike maintenance, anti doping, sports injuries and other things along those lines.

On Tuesday we did the powertests. We rode out to the short course and started the time trials right away. Having not ridden the course I went way slower than I should have. The picture I had of the course in my head was not what the course actually looked like. After making a slight turn I saw the finish line on the top of the hill. I pretty much jumped and tried to get there as fast as possible. From that moment I knew I messed things up big time. It is bad to make up excuses regarding you performance, but I know I could have gone faster. We descended from the top of the climb to its other side. The base of the climb was relatively flat, not pitching considerably until .5 mile to go. Fortunately I paced the long one right. On Thursday we did one last time trial. it was supposed to be 20k but was shortened to 13k because of road work. Alex Meyer was my 30 second man so I had a really good carrot to chase. By the turn around I caught him and kept pushing forward. For the entire TT I averaged 26.5 mph. Later in the day we got results. I was first overall by about 50 seconds with Tony Wieczorek in second. We both got selected for Tour of the Red River Gorge and Tour de L'Abitibi. Both races are going to be incredibly tough, but hopefully I can get some really respectable results. Thanks to Adrienne for paying to send us all down there and Mr. Giboney and Mr. Schilling for taking me there and back.

This weekend I did the Webster Criterium here at home. There is not much that is needed to be said to understand how the race played out. Justin attacked on the first lap so I covered it. We motored through the rest of the lap. I looked back and there was six of us with a gap. The peloton couldn't catch us. We got a gap up to about a minute I think, but I couldn't focus on what people were yelling so I'm not sure. At about 30 minutes I realized that if I was going to finish I was going to have to skip some pulls. Luckily the break was cooperative and let me tailgun it for the most part. Between 40 and 45 minutes I started to feel the cramps coming in my legs. I just kept pushing, I figured if I made it to about 3 to go I would still make it without being caught by the peloton. At 1.5 laps to go the attacks started to go down and I couldn't respond. I might have been able to hold the power output the break did after the attacks, but my legs no longer had the snap to cover anything. I rolled across the line and cramped up immediately after my legs quit turning. Maybe trying just one bottle of water was a bad idea, from now on I'll stick with electrolyte drinks.