One serious weekend of racing. 4/19, 4/20

The Tour de Beach on Saturday was a great day for a race; sunny, warm, Richmond Pro Cycling to rip your legs off. When I first started this blog, I remember I was just an overdeveloped cat 5 without enough competition and was moving up categories as fast as I could. Well, now it's a year later, I've got what I've been waiting for-competition to make me wheeze and push hard. Ok, it's not that bad, but racing now is definitely conditioning me to become a stronger cyclist. For the race on Saturday, I placed 8th. To me, I think that's a very respectable finish.

Sunday was the Casey Crit and the weather took a complete 180 degree turn on everyone. Rain and thunder is never included on my list of enjoyable things to do, but you make the best of it, I suppose. I don't mind riding in the rain, I actually enjoy it a lot, but when it comes to races and being around crazy "roadies" with no bike handling skills, I tend to worry about my well-being a little bit. Just a little! I also want to give credit to my girlfriend, Betsy, who stayed out there the whole time for both of my races. Talk about a keeper! As I was preparing for my first race, she mentioned that she had an umbrella in her trunk. I go to the truck to get it and this thing was bright green and super tiny. I don't even think it would cover up a chihuahua, honestly. Mitch hunt was parked next to me when I whipped that thing out. I'm sure that I had him rolling for a good 5 minutes. Embarrassing! Needless to say, I was going to be soaking wet anyway from racing, so I just got rid of that umbrella, quick! Moving on! My first race, I got a 4th place finish in a 4 man break-a-way. The last lap, no one wanted to do any work, so I decided to pull everyone through to the finish line and lose a good placing on the sprint. 4th is better than getting caught and finishing up in the pack somewhere. An hour later was my next race, the 1,2, 3 race. By this time, I'm dead from the previous day and the race I had just finished. Again, Richmond Pro Cycling made an appearance. With about 25 laps to go, my tired legs were giving out on me. Little cramps every time I got out of the saddle for accelerations. I placed 18th in that race and was ready to get the heck out of there.

I went out for some tropical smoothie after my first race, and as soon as I got back, there was a bad crash on the last lap of the womens race. I'm sure everyone has heard about it...I just hope BJ will take it easy and not pull off a Tyler Hamilton. Hope you get well soon.