Rolled outta Sedona at high noon on Friday, and made it to Phoenix around 3p and I didn’t have to put the monkey suit on until 5:30p….just enough time for a road ride! 58 degrees, sunny, and a 15 mile loop around Fountain Hills was just the ticket. Quick change, got the VIP’s on the bus to the dinner spot and the rest of the evening went as planned. Back in the room ‘round 11:15p and up at 5:30 to a really loud Latina singer on the cheap clock radio – Holy freakin’ heart attack.
The start of the race brought 37 degrees, but I wasn’t taking the first lap, that was C-Dub’s job. I picked up my race #, met him at the line, grabbed his down jacket from his trembling body, and watched him head out with the other 299 riders….Me? Into my kit, and SNAP I knew I was missing something – nobody had any coffee, including my unprepared ass. A shot of Espresso Hammer Gel has 50mg of Caffeine, so there you go….I felt better and managed to take care of biz in the porta pot after a short warm-up to get the juices flowing.
1:03, 1:03, 1:07 and 1:07 were my four lap times. 15.3 miles per lap on the fastest AZ racetrack I know of. I shaved nearly 20 minutes off my combined time from last year on a course that was a mile longer. I got the gear right this year (32x17), and felt pretty strong the entire time other than a lap 3 cramp that was only ¼ mile from the finish. Yeah baby, that’s a good sign going into the state series that starts in a month. We got 6th out of 8 teams in the SS cat which surely doesn’t belong on a marquee. The category was very competitive as the difference between 3rd and 6th was about 1 min and 30 sec per lap. However, that’s a lot of time that we just couldn’t make up - so, no hardware this year to take home, but it was a great race for me and C-Dub and we both definitely left all that we had out there.
After my last lap, I fell asleep in a camp chair with a Tecate in hand, and woke up to a D-bag taking a picture of me laughing. I had to chuckle, and I laughed even harder when I tried to get up and nearly stacked it into one corner of the EZ-Up.
You know you got your money’s worth at a bike race when you:
……are huddled in a port-a-pottie for warmth and the tank full of remnants is the last thing on your mind
……paid $1 per mile + the cost of travel to kick the crap out of yourself
……feel so fresh and so clean when walking out of a port-a-pottie that has a hand sanitizer dispenser
……finished and said “never again”, and then a few beers later you’re talking shit about racing again and all of the stuff you would change to get on the podium
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