Weekend Update

It was a pretty low key weekend planed. I had the Matt Wittig Memorial Race Saturday and then 4 hours of dirt on Sunday. It was shaping up to be an awesome weekend.  The Crit would have tons of UW and TW riders to cheer on and I was excited for that, and Sunday was mountain bikes, what’s not to love. It was made even better by the fact that my mom called me on the way to the race to say she’d be there to watch!

Things unfolded in pretty standard fashion. I signed up, chilled out and got ready. I had a good warm up, which made me happy because I tried something new. I usually do some single leg stuff and some high cadence work  but I added in a 1 minute FTP effort and 2 sprints to get my heart pounding. This is very similar to what I did for Iola and it seems to work pretty well because I was ready to go from the gun. Maybe for WORS I should add in the sprints and 2 FTP efforts because I remember being a little in the hole, but I’ll see. I lined up and the gun went off.

Being the Matt Wittig Memorial race, the UW riders rode together and wore UW jerseys. We sent Eric up the road and blocked. He seemed to have a pretty good chance to stay away, he almost got out of sight from the pack, but got brought back with a few laps to go. From there Josh, a UW alum pushed the pace on the last few laps to string things out and provided the perfect setup for me to sprint for the win. Overall I was proud to put the motion W first across the line, and it was a ton of fun riding with those guys.

I then hoped in the P/1/2/3 to see how I’d fair, turns out pretty well. I felt comfortable in the pack, but I was burning matches to follow accelerations. I flated with about 13 to go and got my free lap. When I joined the group again I worked my way back up and started trying to bridge to the group up the road. I was able to do it and began doing work to try and keep it away. With only a few laps left I was ready to do anything to stay away and secure a pretty solid spot in my second P/1/2/3. It was a 5 man group and I was in the money so I was pretty happy. With 5 laps or so to go 2 wheel and sprocket riders and a stan’s rider bridged and it became a little more tactical.

I do have to say though, it was very dumb for the other big teams to allow 2 teammates to bridge like that, but I guess I wasn’t there so I can’t say much. My mistake was that I kept doing work when I should have begun to pay attention to the gap. Once they started working I could have sat in a little, the group was big enough for that. I kept working and got screwed in the sprint taking 7^th. To say I got screwed though is kind of weird, because I was happy with getting in the break in that race, especially after racing the 3s.

One topic of discussion with my friends lately has been my upgrade. I have to say, I’m a bit nervous because If I upgrade I’m fearful that I’ll be getting spit out the back at memorial day weekend. While that isn’t the worst thing, I was planning on doing well at snake alley and Memorial Day this year and I feel I owe myself the completion of that goal. At the same time if I do upgrade, then do well in the P/1/2, well that’s huge. That’s money and recognition I just can’t pass up. I need to think about it a little more, but there is one thing for sure. If I race Memorial Day as a 3, I’ll be sandbagging hardcore.

There is a lot to say about Sunday, but I can sum it up really quickly, it was amazing. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to just go ride off-road and enjoy it and enjoy the day. On top of that I was with Matt Gehling, a teammate who is on the same level as far as fast as me. He’s definitely better technically and I’m arguably stronger. So riding together pushes me to learn to handle and him to push himself. We never really said to each other, ok let’s rip it. But a few times we just got going fast and really kept it going. Teammates don’t do you much good off-road during races. But training like that? That makes both of us faster and it was honestly some of the most fun I’ve had in months. I can’t wait to do it again.

Next weekend is the Crystal Lake WORS race and I’m still hunting that top 5. Things are looking better and better.