This weekend past (Merco) was a rough one for me. I'd built a couple of bikes for the team and finally got down to building mine Thursday night. Friday I was up and spun around with glass cranks and a multi tool trying to get the new Specialized Toupe saddle to fit my taint. I never really got to get some power down, not that I'd know what I was doing because I'd left off the Power Tap as I'd no time to get it wired in time for the race. Time was NOT on my side.
Drove down to the crit in lovely downtown Merced, home of methane and meth labs, went round and round, tried to get across to a break of 3, got within spitting distance then my legs blew like Chernobyl, missed the subsequent breakaways and rolled across the line. Annoying to have no legs whatsoever.
I stuck around to watch the P-1 race and saw fellow old man Hernandez leap off the front of the pack to grab a $300.00 preme in the first few laps. Ch-Ching- that's a lot of coin for a couple of laps of work. The race looked fast and Horner, BJMain and a Colavita guy made it look easy by lapping the field after spending way too much time in a break letting a Canuckistainian guy nip the premes. Greedy Canadian- get your own economy! :) D-Ho almost stuck it out for 4th, but got caught up in the field with 1 to go and the rest of the pack came in dribs and drabs after a massive pile up.
After the race I hooked up with Stickboy and his teammate Chris, B-Rad from Lombardi Sports and headed over to Motel Seeeecks. We walked over to La Morenita for the mole poblano and a Pacifico to drown my anguish where we saw the Giant Strawberry team hashing, re hashing then talking 'tactics' about bike racing while we talked about girls, food, cars and mobile phones.
The next a.m. we were all up early for the Denny's run. They were actually prepared this year and had some more wait staff on hand to take the 'LumberJackSlam' orders. We saw McCooky there flying solo, sipping joe and gnawing on baby pig strips. We downed way too much coffee, bacon and grits, packed up the toilet, packed up the car and flew over to the road race start.
It was cold, windy and the sun was out. A Belgian kind of day, too bad I couldn't channel my inner Eddy. My taint was roughed up and the legs just weren't there, again. This is annoying when I know the watts (there, I said it) the week before. The Hutch went on to win solo (go figure) after dropping McKinley and another guy just 3 km from the line. Our lead out train never really got going to any effect. I pulled off with about 900m to go with a Morgan Stanley guy firmly glued to my rear wheel who'd swung off with me and didn't pull through. He's screaming 'No!' at his team while they're leading out. 'Team tactics' under a km to go? Well, that's just dumb when the rest of your guys are leading out your sprinter! It was really funny, but what do I know, right? Maybe there are chapters on tactics I didn't get to in the Eddie B. book.
All in all it was a fun weekend- a bit frustrating and pain inducing, but a good weekend of riding. Now on to changing that saddle...