This was a good weekend. It started with a road race in the Palouse wheat fields outside of Walla Walla. Chris and Jace were the first up. 30 miles later, Chris was 13th and Jace learned about racing. Beth was the next contestant. Again, a learning experience. She got back to the van with question after question about tactics, but not about her legs. She is definitely coming to form and should be a force in the coming weeks. Colton was also educated in the road race. He stayed in the pack rather than going with a break only to find that all the teams with the horsepower to bring the break in had a man up the road, but still managed to take 3rd in the field sprint and 10th on the day. I learned once again that UW is going to be a pain in my butt all year long. The got one guy up the road early, I tried to bridge and another Husky grabbed my wheel. I realized quickly that if I bridged up, I would be ridden into the ground until I wore myself out, then they would be gone and I'd be screwed. So when Chris (the UW rider that was sitting on my wheel) attacked me, I decided to sit up and rejoin the pack in the hope that me and another non-Husky would get up the road and bridge up. Unfortunately, the rest of the UW team was on their game and marked every move that came along. 3 laps in, I decided to downshift on a hill, and had just a little too much load on the chain. It dropped and got wedged between the awesomely large BB on my Fuji and my crank. A ride back to the parking lot and a new chain later, I was ready for the TTT.
As a small team, our time trial teams are always a bit unusual. This week we had Chris and Jace in the D field and Beth, Colton and I made up the A team. At this race last year, Chris and Beth made up one team and Blair, Jackson, and I were the other. Jackson was struggling through the TTT, and we got "chicked." Chris and Colton rocked it, taking 4th with a 26:14 time. There's something with this course and Chris that just seems to work. I think it's the cheering of Whitman's most faithful volunteer, Woody Post. The A team lost by a minute plus to our Ds, but not a total flop on our part. Montana State missed their stdart time and crashed , so this year I got to be on the giving end of a chicking.
The crit was a new event to this year's race. It was a windy, 5 corner course out by the airport. Jace struggled today, but he's learning and is doing a whole lot better than I was at that stage in my racing life. He's got some potential and will be a very good rider someday. Beth lost track of the race and missed the bell for the final lap. She did put a pretty solid attack in the next lap though, which nobody went with. Colton was solid as usual, taking 9th. I missed the early break, as usual, but tried my best to get back to it. I got up the road in a chase group with an Oregon rider, a WSU rider, and Chris from the road race. Since both the riders up the road were UW riders (surprise!), I knew Chris wasn't going to work. Jake, the WSU rider, must not have liked the mix of the chase group and decided to sit on. That left myself and McKenzie (UO) to pull the break back. We tried, but wound up getting caught. I rested up as much as I could, and tried again. No go. Rinse and repeat. Nope. At this point we were getting fairly close to finishing. I decided to sit on and grab a wheel for a late move if there was an opportunity to do so. With 3 laps to go, Danny (UW), took off and I decided from watching him do the same thing and fail last week to let him go. This was clearly not last week. He held off the pack for the rest of the race. I'd taken a look around the pack, and saw a lot of strong riders. I knew I didn't really want to take them all on in a short field sprint, so I decided to take a flyer on the backside of the bell lap. I took off and managed to stay away for 5th place. I'm very happy with that result and look forward to improving on it next week at the home race. I wore Chris' helmet-cam and that footage should be pretty killer, so I'll post that along with some photos as soon as it's edited down.
The race course is looking good for this weekend, and should provide a challenge along with a good time. Boise Fry Co. will be out serving up a lot of excellent food on Saturday. Still looking for a few more volunteers, so hit me up if you can help out.
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