Sumation

This past week or so, has been interesting. I have had a chance to see more of California, such as Redlands. Redlands is also a city where one of the largest and hardest NRC Races takes place. Before I continue on with the race reports I want to tell about our host house. Well, this house was owned by a lady named Terri and she allowed the whole team and support to stay at her house while she cooked up every meal. The cooking is something she wanted to do. Now when I say cook every meal I mean there were two breakfasts some days. Also, I can not forget the Welcome banner that she personally made by hand and hung from the windows on the second floor of the house. The race is four days. With a day 1: uphill TT, day 2 hill to rolling road race, day 3 criterium and day 4 Rolling to hill road race. The Uphhill TT was not as up hill as one would think, since there was some down hill section along with a descent amount of just over false flat rise in the road for a while, in relation to the total distance of the race (5km). This was going to be good for me, but not the best since I am good at Time Trialing and climbing, but for some reason not the greatest at uphill time trials. Yet with that said I went in with a solid mindset and ready to post a solid time. My time was not too great and I was about 2minutes down on guys like Oscar Sevilla and Alessandro Batero. After the time trial we rode back to the house and took a shower and had dinner and relaxed. I moved my bed down to the basement to sleep, or should I say lay through the night and only sleep for about three hours maximum. Yes, I know I should get more sleep, but my mind would not shut off and I just laid there as calm and collected as I could. The next morning I did not feel as bad as I would think and had some coffee to try and help the situation. Once we arr rived att he race site I was feeling good and thought maybe I slept more than I thought, then I began to yawn at the start line and knew that was not the reality of the situation. The race started and my legs were ok, but not great. on the first couple of 6 laps I was able to follow attacks and be ok, then on the final lap there were guys just pulling out of the race and leaving large gaps oven in the strung out field!!! and for some reason I seemed to be behing all of these gaps. What the HECK!!!!! So I lost a couple minutes on that stage but was happy with how it played out considering the field and my sleep deprivation. After the race the team was sitting down under our tent and trying to get food into our bodies when our director sportif heard the ice cream truck, which when he is around that is a good thing because he loves ice cream. Since the day was hot he dashed off and came back with a box of various ice cream bars and sandwiches. This hit the spot along with the Endurox and other recovery foods we had on hand. Once we were done changing and eating the treats we headed back to the house for a proper shower and dinner.
The next day was a criterium at 3pm so this meant we could sleep in and have ez ride in the morning come back have lunch before the race that evening. So that is exactly what we did. After the morning ride and some lunch, we headed out to the race. Now the plan for the day was just get through the criterium to start the next day which is where the race would truly be made. So this is was I did. Not exactly how I would have planned it but achieved the task I was given. Normally I would not sit on the back of criterium on purpose. For some reason it was easy to sit in without doing too much work on the back of this race. Normally on the back of a technical criterium the back is the last place you want to be since the speed variations are so wide that you kill your legs far more than if you sat towards the front. Since it was easier there I stayed and was sitting pretty until Toyota United decided that Rock Racing was not bringing the breakaway back fast enough and decided to turn the screws more than everyone else wanted to ride and the gaps began to open up again and again I was in the wrong place, but I finished the race and was able to start the next day. One funny thing here was that there was another rider in the field whom I raced wtih on the same team while in Belgium. We actually shared a house. So he and I had a chance to catch up a bit. He is from New Zealand, so I was quite surprised to see him.
Ok, on to the last day. Since upto this point my luck had not been in my favor I was thinking today will be the day. The course is and attrition course and that is my kind of race. So we start out with two loops of the previous days criterium than climb up to a loop that is hilly for 12 laps then back down to the criterium course to finish the race now the first two laps on the crit course were fast but I was positioned well and coming off the crit course and starting the ascent to the sunset loop I moved myself into top ten position where I was sitting right behind the Rock Racing Train, which was perfect since they would be setting tempo to prevent attacks. Then the luck decided that it had spared me enough good time for the day and a crash happened and this caused the field to swam around me since guys were accelerating to get away from the carnage. this caused me to have to move left to try and reposition myself at the front. Well just as I was doing this one or two riders curb checked their bikes causing a good since pile up and a good gap to open up leaving me gaped off again. Why again!!!!! I was sitting where I needed to be for a solid ride in the race. I began to chase back on but the King Of the Mountain was coming up and the field accelerated and I was losing time. So I ended up chasing for 90km until my race was over for the first 30km or so I was able to match the speed of the group and this gave me hope that I would be able to get back on. No such luck this weekend. I do want to mention that Adrian Gerrits finished 12th on the day on of the riders for our team this is a really solid result. WAY TO GO ADRIAN!!!!!!!!!
With this weekend I know I am fit and strong enough to get solid results with the races on my schedule I just need to get everything to line up. Bike racing is one of those sports where there are so many uncontrollable variable that these races happened and it is up to the rider to take them and come away smarter and strong both physically and mentally to continue on.

I apologize for some of the spelling errors but the spell check keeps changing some of the works so one I don't want.

Matt