First race jitters: Offically Out

So its January, and you all know what that means, thats right, a crit. Wait, no no no, thats wrong, January is for smashing your old heart rate records on the trainer or riding long enough to stop for lunch and actually pay for it. That does, of course, depend on where you live. I have gotten a bit of both worlds this past week, but I will save talking about the weather and my training habits for the end of the conversation, when we have run out of other things to talk about.

So Parrish and I drove out to the race in Avondale, AZ (I drove from Tucson, then John, his wife, and I made the 40 minute journey from phoenix to, you guessed it, phoenix) to find a nice sweeping turn course without bumps and in some places, without curbs, or even a distinguishable finish line (if your colorblind especially). I watched the 3's race and felt sick to my stomach as they went through the first turn thinking "oh man, they are going to crash, sheesh thats fast, we really do this?!" So my strategy from that point on was to spend as much time off the front as humanly possible as to reduce the amount of time anyone else had a chance of crashing in front of me. Many of you who know me are saying "well thats no different than your strategy in every race" and your pretty much right, but today i felt like i had method to the madness: dont die.

This is not a way to go into a race, so i just shut that all out and concentrated on what actually matters: 1) Win the race. 2)Win primes 3)Get a great training ride in. These three things should be taking up your mind power, not "oh my God oh my God oh my God"

So, sack up, sally, and attack the field.

It was one of those days where there wernt any technical corners to slow up the field, no hills to tire the field, no wind to string out the field, and 15 guys on the same team wanting to "show off" their new digs and big numbers. Not letting any of this hinder any pointless breakaway attempt, i tried and tried and tried again, always justifying everything under the excuse of "its good training" which is another way of saying "you didnt go hard enough". I looked down at one point and figured we had gone over the time scheduled, and we had only gone 30 minutes... "oh, drag."

At one point evan rolls up next to me and goes "i think i got an idea! its brilliant! we both attack together!" It was a good idea. it did not work. so 85 minutes of failed attacking later, there were 5 to go and we were taking less than a minute to do a lap. I got a bit swamped but a bit of early season fitness allowed me to make up for that mistake and get position for the sprint. Marcotte made me and the other guy i was sprinting (unsuccessfully) for the win look stupid as he ripped by us before the line as if we wernt riding bikes. I ended up third which i was satisfied with despite the fruitless breakaways, my sprint is getting a bit better.

There are some seriously strong guys out here, thats for sure, and they deserve credit where its do in saying that race was underestimated by me and parrish and everyone else i talked to, turns out the arizona crowd can get going in a crit just like back in the midwest. Felt at home, plus about 50 degrees.

In other recent news, i attended a Jon Chodroff "spin" class during the armegeddon weather week for some good old trainer wars on thursday. I did not expect the following 1 hour of my life to look like this:

Good One!! Yesh.

So, the other big news this past week was the weather. The weather decided the following: nothing. It was cold, sunny, windy, rain, hurricane, snow, pressure washer, el nino, the nino, 4 feet of snow. BUT, when I finally did get to ride outside, i tried to capture some of the beauty that is Tucson doing its best Boulder CO impression:

Yet, when all was said and done, the weather returned to consistency and another sunset became part of my life in a really good way: