Demoralization Station

Race reports from the last three races:

Oh man. I didn't expect to get walloped like I did in the TT. Clearly my plan of stating my intention to do well on my blog backfired in a big way. Placing 49th, and losing a minute to guys who I regularly beat wasn't exactly a confidence booster. I don't know what happened -- I thought I was going good! I do know that my teammate Jake, while riding a road bike, beat former world TT champ Santiago Botero by 5 seconds. So that was cool.

Last night's crit was crazy. It was long (90 minutes), and hard. The course was pretty tight, so it was strung out the whole time, and there were a lot of crashes. Fortunately nobody on our team went down. Unfortunately a lot of other guys did -- a Rock Racing guy left the race on a stretcher, and I was slowed up in a crash where I got to see a wide-eyed Ben Jacques-Maynes feeling his collarbone to see if it was broken. Fortunately I was able to rest for three laps after one of the bigger pileups by going into the pit with the rest of the crash victims. Unfortunately that still didn't save me from getting gaped off towards the end. My group was pulled from the race with one lap to go, and we lost 1:25. People who were pulled with AN HOUR of racing remaining only lost 3:35. I should have chosen that option.

Today's road race was also completely bungled by yours truly. I wanted to redeem myself by going for the breakaway. I ended up attacking so hard I got dropped from the field early on. I plummeted woefully through the field (and then the caravan, and then like 30 cars that were behind the caravan), and I got to enjoy the sublime embarrassment of having carload after carload of people I know pull along side me, say encouraging things, and then drive off shaking their heads, and wondering why I sucked so much. I ended up chasing for an hour (often catching shameless and lengthy drafts from motor vehicles), and finally catching the grupetto. We never caught the field.

I have one more day. One more day to do SOMETHING of note in this race.