Teammates: Brian, Aaron, Scott in SS...
Photos c/o Tim Brennan (see more).
Pilarcitos numba one took place at Hellyer Velodrome, which was sorta cool. Pre-riding the bumpy-ass course I was worried about the technical spots and of course those damn bumps on my lower back. Most of the heavy-hitters were in Gloucester so it was a nice local race, except that Old Man Noble made the drive from So. Cal to put the hurt on us. Picked the wrong day not to wear gloves - got a nice blister on the right palm.
Anyhow, youda thunk it was the M35+ race with Mark Noble, Rich Maile, and Mike Hernandez, and myself duking it out (how old is Hooptie?). Got a good start behind Rich and plowed up to the first barriers into the first U-Turn - oops rear tire slides out and Hernando barely misses me. Hop back on in 6th or so and look up and Noble is already powering away - good, I didn't want to ride with him anyhow. Henandez, though, I had plans for him... So I resigned myself to getting back up with him and Rich, so I settle in with Cameron, and Hooptie (having a good ride) to try and bring them back. Rich crashes and joins our group. I sit on for a lap and take a pull and somehow we drop Cam. Rich, Rob, and I set our sights on Hernando. Then Rich flats and somehow Hooptie flies the coop in a mad bridge up to Mike. Schnikies, all of a sudden I'm alone in 4th and the Hernando-Hooptie duo is taking pulls about 4 sec ahead of me. Over the next few laps I slowly pull them back and was about 10M behind entering the track, and Hernando decides he doesn't want me to catch so he flexes his Cat 1 legs and does a textbook 200M track sprint leaving Hooptie and me to fight out 3rd place. Lucky for me, Hooptie drops his chain on the next lap and I just ride a hard tempo in for the last 3 laps for 3rd.
Anyhow, it was a good ride for me and my undertrained and underslept ass, and my back seemed to hold up ok - which is pretty amazing since that was the bumpiest race ever. Mark was untouchable and rode a fine race. Kudos to him and to Mike who was damn fast as well. I have some work to do...
Oh, and Hooptie gets extra style points for doing cross-ups into the wood-chips every lap. BTW I wonder if he recalls the good old days when we used to battle it out in the Surf City B's (circa 1999)...
Congrats to Matthias for winning the Master B's - I think he's found his new calling.
Next stop: Soquel High with all those boys home from Gloucester...yikes!
Oh, and much thanks to Julie Barrot and Eric Sterner for the hand-ups - was a pretty hot day and it was much appreciated.
4 comments:
Things I did well yesterday (because of you):
I rode all the sandy duffy stuff on the tops. You would've been proud of me flying through the muck at the start with no brakes! I admittedly braked a bit on the three sandy descents, but rode them pretty darn well. Our evening in the sand at GGP added lots of confidence.
Next week my goal is to perfect my timing on the barriers -- somehow was way off this race, dismounting too late to get a good run over them.
Thanks, Funkdaddy!
And congrats on your race!
Yeah, plowing those wood chips takes some nerves and steam - great job!
I had timing problems of my own on the barriers, the approaches yesterday were either really fast or a little awkward. I caught my toe a few times and on every remount it seemed my left pedal was a 12-o'clock...
fabuloso reportage, funkmeister.
you were definitely gaining buckets of time on hooptie and me through the duffy descent. i kept looking back, gauging just how soon it would be till you made contact. thankfully i had a bit of juice to thrown in that acceleration.
well ... at least we get good starting positions at Candlestick for when the big guns come back to stomp in a couple weeks.
might as well take advantage of it, eh?
you weren't the only one that ended up with blisters yesterday, although it was my forefingers that got it. i felt like a total n00b!
Post a Comment