Home again, home again, Jiggity Jig!

Hello peoples!

It has been a good while since I've gotten a post up for my loyal readers, all 12 of you :-). Apologies for the wait whilst I get settled back into life in Colorado.

I am home!

After long weeks in Mesa, Tucson, Phoenix, and Tempe I am finally back to life in Colorado.  I made the drive back up on Monday the February 21st, a long 14 hours behind the wheel to do the trip in one day.  Luckily I had a great copilot to help keep me going throughout the drive.  It was a good trip to accomplish some goals for my race season.  It was a great reminder of how great the city of Denver and state of Colorado is when compared to some other places people choose to live.  In fact it is nearly as warm and definitely as sunny in CO as in the desert.

I have done one race since my last entry.  There was a criterium  put on by the ASU cycling club that I did the Sunday before I left AZ.  It was a standard office park type crit in the ASU research park in south Tempe.  The course was pretty basic too, only two real turns, essentially a half moon shape.  Turn one about 200 meters after the start/finish, a sweeping 90 degree right.  Turn two was about 200 meters before the start/finish, a sweeping 90 degree right.  Between the two turns was a long, slow right hand bend.  There was no real elevation change around the circuit either.


Unfortunately the weather was not very "sunny Arizona" that day, in fact there was cloud cover and wind and rain all that weekend.  This created an excuse for most of the fair weather racers in Arizona to stay home and we only started with 25 guys for this race.  It did end up being a good cross section of some different teams and strong riders so there was a chance to play out some fun tactics.  I was the sole representative from the Rio Grande team, as all the other fellas from the team were already back up in Colorado.  


A few feigned attacks and little breakaway attempts were made in the first half of the 60 minute race but nothing stuck.  After about 35 minutes of racing there were a few hard attacks and a final selection was made in the small field.  7 guys, myself included, made a final breakaway group.  The group also included Eric Marcotte, the winningest racer in AZ, and pro John Parrish.  It came down to the final lap and Marcotte was leading out, I was second wheel behind him.  Marcotte is a major force in a sprint so nobody wanted to come around him and pull him to the finish.  He decided to stop pedaling and slow down so somebody would be forced to come around him.  Everyone else slowed down too and Marcotte was still first wheel, at which point he actually hit the brakes.  This was an aggressive and unpredictable thing to do and definitely caught me off guard.  As fast as my synapses could fire I grabbed a handful of brakes too but not before I was completely crossed over his wheel and sure I was going to crash.  Somehow, I managed to keep my machine upright and the rubber on the road.  It was a quick shuffle in the small group and we got back to the last lap to figure out the sprint.  Parrish won, Marcotte second, I came in fourth.


Ok,  I have more to say but if I don't stop here then I will never get this thing published.


I promise the next post will not take me a month!



Ride On y'all,


Drew