Wenatchee Omnium Stage Race

Lindsay and I left Friday and arrived at our "fine" hotel in Wenatchee. I guess we shouldn't expect too much out of a $49 hotel but hey it did have free breakfast with a waffle maker. I love waffles.

Saturday Morning Time Trial:

I met with Rolly and Mark there at the hotel and we changed and headed out to ride the TT course. It was a fairly easy course with a few rolling hills. The biggest concern was going to be how the wind was come Saturday morning. I borrowed some TT equipment from my teammate Travis Dougan. He gave me his disc wheel with his power tap, his space helmet, and TT bars. The bars wouldn't fit on mine so that was the only thing I wasn't going to be able to use. I took the last 3 spacers out of my handle bars so I could get the front of my body in a more aero position. I lined up at the start line and we were going off every 30 seconds but the person in front of me was a no show so I didn't have anyone to try and chase. That could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. I have never trained or used a Power tap before so I tried not to mess with it too much. I had my cadence, speed and power up on the screen and just tried to keep my cadence right around 100 rpm's. I went out and turned around and then the suffering began. There was a strong headwind on the way back to the start/finish line. Its pretty demoralizing peddling as hard as you can and just not going anywhere. I hunkered down as much as I could to make myself as small as possible and made sure to keep my elbows in to limit any drag. The TT was 9 miles of being in your red zone the whole time. I was pretty wiped out afterward and never using a power tap before I cleared everything as I went across the line thinking it would save it. Oops. No data. I found out later in the evening I finished 15th. Not to bad I thought and having those things from Travis I beleive made alot of difference. Just imagine if I had a specific Time Trial bike? Maybe next year. FINISH 14th / 24:49.93 minutes




Saturday Evening Criterium:

We had our coaches from Cycle U there this weekend for the road team which was a huge help, Coach Ed, Coach Kristi, and Coach Lang. We arrived at the course downtown Wenatchee at 3 pm and walked the circuit with Ed and Lang. This was a huge help and just talking tactics and things to watch out for and lines to be on was great stuff and a huge advantage I think. We lined up and the promoters shortened our race from 30 minutes to 20 minutes. This we believe was the reason the criterium was so brutal. It was non-stop and there was never a chance to rest, not even a little bit. I began to fall back a bit in the first few laps. The course was 4 right hand turns with the last corner being a nice little hill a block long and the first corner being the downhill part for a total of .6 miles. The second corner at the bottom of the hill had a man hole cover right in the middle of the corner. I found that I was able to carry a ton more speed in the first downhill corner and then make up even more ground on the guys in the corner with the man hole cover. It was a bit sketchy and I did hit part of the cover one time that bounced me all the way to the outside of the corner but other than that this is where I would make up my ground. The group I managed to catch up to had 4 or 5 guys in it. Each lap I practiced the move in the first and second corner and every time it seemed to work. A big help was having Coach Ed yelling at me to close the gab and just yelling encouragement. We came around for the final lap and I was at the back of our group right where I wanted to be. The reason I was carrying so much more corner speed was everyone would stop pedaling hard and soft pedal in between the two corners. I was able to get the bicycle upright in the middle of the first corner and start pedaling hard almost all the way down the hill to the second corner. Then my momentum would carry me through the second corner. I was able to get every line I wanted on those two corners and I moved closer to the front of the group for the short hill climb. Once on the straight for the start/finish, I out sprinted the guy in front of me to finish ahead of my group. The majority of the field was dropped and pulled from the course along with Mike and Mark who hung on as long as possible. Rolly finished in the top 5 after finishing 3rd in the Time Trial. FINISH 9th



Sunday Road Race:

We were racing 33 miles and after a 3 mile roll out it was 12 miles up hill. Coach Ed and Coach Kristi spoke to us before our start time and just said ride your own pace up the hill. Let the eager guys go up the hill fast and pop. I hung with Rolly as long as I could and he just motored up the hill. I was able to latch on to a couple guys and we paced ourselves up the hill. We made it to the church for the neutral water.



The climb at some sections were 21% and really tough. I tried to stay in the saddle as long as I could then take a couple short breaks standing up. Once we got to the very top it was beautiful scenery and a mass relief. My plan was to hang on during the climb and make up my time on the decent. When we reached the top we had a group of 4 or so. I immediately stood up and hammered the pedals and took off. The decent was pretty fun with some tight corners and some fast sweepers. I broke the group behind me and was on my own, elbows in, knees in, and chin on handle bars allowed me to reach 48 mph! I passed a few guys on the way down the hill and as I was coming to the end of the decent I looked back to see one of the guys left. I waited for him to catch back up so we could work together. We could see a large group at the bottom of the decent. Adam and I have worked together before at some other races and always chat it up in the peloton. This worked out well as we both took very quick turns at the front pulling each other along. As we got to the bottom of the hill the corner marshal for some reason thought it would be ok to keep 2 cars waiting pretty much in the middle of the intersection. One of the guys that I followed on the climb was fixing his bike so I assume he crashed there in the intersection. Then we came up behind the follow car and the race official. They decided to stop in the middle of the corner. Adam and I were pretty fired up at that point and yelled at them as we had the momentum and worked so hard to catch the group in front of us only to have the official stop the car right in front of us. After a few choice words we got back to our rotation and finally caught the group. Now there was close to 9 of us as we picked up a few more guys. About 2 miles before the finish I was thinking to myself how was I going to out sprint all of these guys. I wasn't feeling to confident I had anything left for a big bunch sprint. A few seconds later I saw bike after bike flying in the air in front of me. Sh*tttttt... I grabbed a handful of brakes and tried at the same time to get my feet out of the clips. I moved over to the right side next to the guard rail to try and avoid the carnage in front of me. I got stopped right in front of Adam and fell over on a bike. Adam was on the ground as he couldn't avoid the bikes and went down fairly hard on someone else. I got out of my clips and looked around and was pushing my bike and going again. We were probably cruising along around 22 mph when the crash happened. A guy and his teammate clipped wheels and that's what started it. As I got going again there were 3 guys in front that missed the wreck and I knew I wasn't going to catch them so I just tried to get as big of a gap as I could between the guys behind me. Thankfully I didn't have to sprint to the line and finish in 10th place. Rolly finished in the top 5 and Mike and Mark finished just after I did. What a great weekend it was.
FINISH 11th.

OVERALL Tied for 10th but listed in 11th place.

I plan on taking the rest of May off and getting back to it in June. Big thanks to the coaches that came out and cheered us on and talked strategy. Lindsay and Jodi for cheering for us from the beer garden and keeping us in line.