Ketchup

Wow, I just checked my last blog and it was like three weeks old. Sorry dudes. The last two weeks have been sooo busy, trying to get everything finished before finals, taking finals, trying to fit in training, hanging out with my friends, and making sure we don't run out of peanut butter.

I guess I'll start with the 12 Hours of Tsali. I had never done a 12 hr race before so I didn't really know what to expect. Simple enough, I was on a team of four and one person would go out and do a lap, come back and the next person in rotation would do a lap, etc. It wasn't too hard because you could go as hard as you could because you had almost 3 hours to recover. Each lap would be FSA but Andy reminded us to be safe and not take any risks. It would be more important to finish each lap than save 2 or 3 seconds on a downhill.

My job was to run the LeMans start and get us a good gap on the first lap. I was about the 5th or 6th person on the bikes and in the first lead group. It was kind of funny because Andy is like: "There is no reason you shouldn't have a five minuet gap on the first lap." Whatever Andy, the start of the course goes up a fairly long (7 minuet) climb up the county line road and I wanted to get the front of the race whittled down as much as possible so I could open a time gap. The entire climb I was constantly attacking, trying get the bunch down to just me. By the top it was down to three riders: Me, Wess Dickson, and Victor Alber. I didn't know it was Victor until the end of the lap-more on that later. So we stayed together pretty much the whole lap. Wess dropped off on one of the last climbs so it was just Victor and me.

Pause for a sec. I used to race Victor when I was a junior x after I moved up to Senior Expert he disappeared, he did some races down in FL (where he's from) but that's about it. When he was a junior x he was freaking flying, he would win pretty much every race.

So I'm trying not to be conceited but when we hit the last climb and this dude was still with me I was a little pissed. It would have been different if it was like: Ryan Woodall or Robert Marion or somebody I knew who was fast. But I had never seen this guy before to make it even worse he DROPPED ME on the decent. Now this was sacrilege, I might not be the fastest descender around but I can usually hold my own. And this dude dropped me. I was really pissed now so I chased for about two miles or so and caught back on. Just before the last climb. I went to the front and attacked him as soon as I got there but the hill was a little longer than I remembered so I kind of blew at the top allowing Victor to grab my wheel. The last three miles was the fastest I've ever done Tsali, every incline I was on the gas and I don't think was even gaping him. We came into start/finish sooo fast I almost ran into Andy, handed off my baton and headed back to the truck.

Andy opened another two minuets on his guy and Ethan and Seth opened about a minuet a piece. So by the time I came around again it was up to about 4 minuets. We kept on going from there. It was still really close because if we had a wreck or a flat, the other teams would be back in the mix. Luckily we had no flats or mechanical or crashes and other than Ethan cramping on his third lap we had no problems.

I posted an album on facebook and you can check it out here:
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000310&l=9da8a&id=1116960092

This last week of high school went by sooo fast, I still don't remember what I did like Tuesday or Wednesday. It feels really strange because I'm really tired of school but I'm probably never going to see half these people again. Oh well, I guess I'll find some more people to hang out with in college but that seems forever away.

Tomorrow is the SERC in Jackson, GA. Things look pretty good because I'll probably stay here instead of going to Utah because wonderful USA Cycling changed the selection process. Now the automatic nominations go to the winner of nats and the winner of the NMBS at Sugar, at week later. So I don't have to spend money to go to Salt Lake City. And I can stay here, do the SERC at Fontana and pretty much grauntee winning the SERC series. Therefore I'll be around this summer training and racing instead of being on the road everyweek.

Ketchup, the mellowing agent.
TC