Tour de Olmstead

Basically, long story short....we dominated Louisville this past Saturday. From the gun, Spencer attacked and from that point on, we had at least one team member off the front of the race at all times. We were in every single move that went, and ended up placing Blake in a three man break that stayed away to the finish. I had the luxury of sitting up just behind the bunch sprint to see Blake cross the finish line with his arms raised in front of the other two escapees. It was great.

The circuit was awesome. It was in Iroquois Park just south of Churchill Downs. The course was a 4 mile loop through dense trees and the only straight and flat part was the quarter mile finishing stretch. Everything else was up and down and really twisty. It made for fun and exciting racing in a great setting.

No racing this weekend, but June 27th is the Hyde Park Blast down in Cincy.

Pre-Race Prep for Tour de Olmstead

I figured I'd take an unorthodox approach to my preparation for this weekend's Tour de Olmstead in Louisville, KY. Instead of the normal intervals, tapering, and diet watching I normally go through before races, I decided to let my dog Jack take care of my pre-race nutrition by finding my stash of Clif Bars and consuming 740 calories in about 5 minutes. He weighs 30 lbs, by the way....that's going to be an unhappy stomach. 

He's so embarassed about how fat he's going to get, he can't even look at the camera. 

Now that my pre-race "carb loading" was all taken care of, all that was left was to get a good pre-race warm-up ride in. Normally this consists of a 15-20 mile ride that's nice and easy with a couple of moderate efforts thrown in. Nothing too taxing, just a nice ride to loosen up the legs. Well, I decided to forgo that nonsense and get some cross-training in right before the race. This consisted of a lot of shoulder and torso workouts, minimal walking, and absolutly ZERO time on the bike. I took a picture that I'm thinking of sending to Chris Carmichael so he can use it to help all those rich dentists tear it up during their weekend group rides.

The burn I got from this workout made me feel like a middle aged mom...not a bike racer. Such a refreshing change of pace!

Okay, in all seriousness....I had a great week of training leading up to this weekend's race. I'm feeling good and am ready to be aggressive down in Louisville. Maybe I'll give Mine That Bird a run for the money. Race report to come early next week!

State Champs Update/Obstacle Course

This past Saturday in Fishers, IN was the Indiana State Road Race Championships. Upon arrival at Chris Pfeiffer's house, we learned that there was a giant trench that, days before, had been dug right through the middle of a section of the course. Crispy was really concerned that the race organization wasn't aware of this new development and had probably been practicing his cyclocross dismounts at 27mph.

Luckily, the organization did know about the construction and had made some adjustments to the course that avoided  this impassable construction, but took us through a couple other sections of less-intense road constrution. The field only had to worry about bunny hopping a plank of plywood, jumping off of a couple small drop-offs, and praying you didn't get a flat running over a large patch of broken pavement. Oh...and also keeping your fingers crossed the person operating the backhoe wasn't digging up riders as they passed by.

The race was pretty uneventful and pretty fast (we averaged 25mph for the 60+ miles we did). The selection, instead of being made my the "hill" or attacks, was made by multiple racers getting flats every lap. Unfortunately, we had a couple of teammates flat that weren't able to finish. New teammate, Brian Richter put in a solo attack early in the race only to flat after getting a sizeable lead on the field. 

After 9 laps of the course, it was time for the sprint...unfortunately, I didn't have my banana that morning and began to cramp a little in the final mile. I was able to maintain my position going into the sprint, but once it started my legs weren't working like I wanted, and I fell back a bit to finish 33rd. Overall, it was a frustrating day for the whole team...no one did terrible (I think 3 or 4 were in the top 25), but all of us were expecting a lot more. It's a tough course to have any type of finish other than a 40+ man field sprint, so unless you're a pure sprinter, or get lucky during the lead-in to the sprint, there's little chance of making a big impact.

Next on tap for me is the Tour de Olmstead this weekend down in Louisville, KY...it's a hilly 4 mile circuit. That makes me drool :)