Home field advantage

The last week has been pretty awesome and I have a lot to not only talk about, but be thankful for. I’ll try to be concise.

Roll back the clock to 2 weekends ago. Leland Kermesse was a really tough race but I think I learned a lot coming out of it. I certainly went really deep and completely depleted things from not eating enough and just the fact that it’s such a hard race on the body. I’m sure it’s nothing compared to a real Belgium Classic, but enough of a taste. Then the next day I did a lot of work for the team (quantity, but not quality) and ended up coming out on top with a win at GDVC in the sprint. But it was a hard weekend and I could feel at GDVC that I was pretty tired. I decided to take an easy week to give the body some rest.

But there was no way I was going to skip Wednesday Worlds. So on Wednesday, after two days of easy recovery rides, I went out and got ready to crush it. I felt pretty good, but not great for the first hour or so and won the sprint into Belleville. Then on the 92 climb skip attacked like I knew he would and I followed. I proceeded to go super deep to follow and just couldn’t close the gap. Something that I wasn’t too bummed about, but when I noticed that the group was also gaining I realized just how hard skip was going, he wasn’t. Things went downhill from there as I just completely blew up. In hind sight it was probably due to a poor breakfast that morning, but that in itself was telling of my overall fatigue. I was making bad decisions just to get some food in me, and I was too tired to stop myself.

I’m really taking it easy now. Thursday and Friday were easy recovery and I planned on taking it easy on Saturday in prep for Sunday’s road race. In my little time off, I went in to talk to Speed Cycling’s own Gordy Paulson. For those of you who don’t know, Gordy is a well-known cycling coach, from my understanding the best in the mid-west. And I can see why. I was happily surprised when Gordy sat down with me to see that he wasn’t a salesmen telling me how awesome training can be. He was real, and told me how hard it would be. But he wasn’t trying to scare me, he was trying to prepare me and had a confidence and experience about him that made me feel like this was something big! I instantly felt my motivation shoot up 100% right there. If you’re at that point in your cycling career where you don’t know where to go, talk to the people at speed because no matter where you’re at, they know where to go and how to get there.

After the chat I was ready to show what I could do, maybe a little too much. I took Friday pretty chill on a lunch ride and went home on Friday night to some amazing food from my mom. Pot Roast, mashed potatoes, and homemade apple sauce! It was amazing, and my friends who joined me agreed. It was more of a nod because we were all too full to say anything. I probably had eaten too much but I didn't care, it was so good!

The weather on Saturday morning was pretty bad. Rain expected all day and the temperature was dropping as the day went on. It’s been so nice out that I almost forgot it was spring, but this was good reminder. The team had a pretty good plan in place, and we started the race in a dominating fashion. We controlled the race and kept things together. This was my job and things seemed to be going well, but pulling back all those breaks was wearing the pack thin including my team. Strength wise, I was going well. But tactically I had basically eliminated most of my own team. Not what you want to do in a race. We re-strategized and came out with a solid third in the sprint with new member Alex Martin, but we were definitely looking for the win.

My mom outdid herself again that night with spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. I tried to tone it down and eat less. I was able to do this, but still over-ate. Who cares, I needed the calories for the following day at the Kettle Moraine Klassic road race. I woke up and was feeling so-so. Not spectacular but I could tell my legs were happy to have some rest time, as they were feeling ok, but not fatigued. This was good because I had my eye set on this race as one to win. We had a loose idea of a plan as a team; basically we wanted to force a split half way through the race and see where we sat and who was there. When the time came there was one guy off the front for Rhythm Racing and we were not well organized so I called it off. Instead we chased the solo break guy down and the brought him back.

Once we caught him the attacks started flying hard. By this point we were well organized as we had just all moved up to the front to pull the break back. We were able to put a guy into every break and play the tactical game for 2 laps. We had a lot of times where we were able to have 2 guys in a small break. But they all came back. The dominant teams were us, Rhythm Racing, and LAPT, having Michael who had gone in the solo break at GDVC #1 with me.  One of these teams was always left out in the break so they never quite got away. Until on the final lap on the back stretch a Rhythm Racing guy got away around the corner and I followed hard. We opened up a 10 second gap pretty quickly and decided that this was it. We put our heads down on that stretch and got probably 20-30 seconds. Not much but a comfortable gap on the last lap. On the final stretch the RR guy was starting to fade so I did most of the pulling. I was in kill mode for sure.

Coming down the final hill with the last corner in sight we had maybe 15 seconds on the pack with red jerseys all over the front keeping the pace slow enough for me to stay away but I could see that others were trying to get through and they started coming fast. I came into the last corner behind the RR guy and took it really hard, clipping my pedal on the corner. I’d like to say I skillfully kept it under control, but I just kept pedaling and somehow my back wheel jumped 3 feet and landed perfectly as I sat down and started hammering. I stayed seated with less than 5 seconds, barely a gap. A GDVC rider came leaping out of the pack yelling “I’m gonna get you”. I whispered to myself “no, you won’t” as I put everything I had into the pedals. Looking back the rider was on my wheel but couldn’t come around. I stayed seated and continued to hammer. I couldn’t see my computer at the time but looking at the data I was pushing 900 watts coming to the line. Did you see the Tour of Romandie where Wiggins took the sprint? It was almost like that, in the saddle, everything I had. I looked back just before the line and had a bike length. I sat up and pounded my chest once and then raised my arms in the air for the win.

It was an exciting victory to say the least. I was looking for a victory like this. A hard race one where the win wasn’t something I could get just for being the strongest. And by no means was I the strongest. A lot of the Rhythm Racing guys were crazy strong. But we won in the end. We won because we worked well as a team and played the right cards at the right time. That on top of a little bit of good luck with me getting into the break with a guy that I was stronger than. It all came together at once and for that I cannot thank my teammates enough. Alex Martin, Tim Racette, Julio Jacobo, Andrew Hellpap and Ben Stengel. Each one of these guys put in everything and I thank them!

WORS #1 is up next weekend and it should be a really fun weekend hanging out and riding off-road. Can’t wait to get dirty!