Friday, May 21, 2010

Mutt

HEY HEY!

Last time I wrote I was riding high on some pretty solid form unfortunately a month and a bit later my fortunes have somewhat turned. After the Southern Illinois race weekend I experienced a solid patch of bad luck. I'm a firm believer that you make your own luck, but I'm not sure how else to sum up the series of events that have haunted my racing this past month.

It started at the Michigan State road race, a race I was really excited about racing as the course was very Belgian Keremesse like, which featured a 2km section of gravel and the rest being held on narrow farm roads. Knowing about the dirt section I went and sourced out a solid set of hardy tires and even put some "puncture proof" inner liners in. First lap in I was feeling great, I led over the gravel section and was sitting comfortably in the group and well positioned in the crosswind sections, but second time around on the gravel my rear tire had blown. The spare car was well behind the group (see photo below) and after a bit of chase I realized that my day was over. I was pretty annoyed as it was the first collegiate race that I hadn't finished.

Hating life in Michigan

After returning from Michigan I was eager to make up for the lack of results and trained with renewed vigor going into the last race of the regular conference season, Regional Championships. This year they were held at Purdue in Indiana, I had a good result there last year and was looking forward to the race again. On the Friday as we were just loading up the vans some sort of gnarly flu or virus hit me like a sack of proverbial shit and that was it. I spent the weekend in the hotel room in the fetal position on my bed. I didn't eat for 30 hours, just drank water and gatorade and slept. Disappointing to say the least.

Tilles Park Criterium

Having had such good early season success, my position on the team headed for Nationals was still there fortunately. The virus I got knocked a few kilos of my weight which would be good heading into the Nationals road race which was to be held over some hilly terrain in Wisconsin. The course was the same as the 1st stage of the Tour of Americas Dairyland, so I was familiar with just how hard it was. With that in mind I put down some really solid training in preparation for it and being rested I felt I was on some real good form. Again, unfortunately I had a mechanical on the major climb of the course which meant I couldn't get into my two highest gears which meant I was struggling just to turn my pedals over.
The team, as I predicted in the last post, had an awesome weekend with the evergreen Matt Brandt getting 3rd in the criterium and Tim Norris getting 18th. Nationals just topped off a great season for Lindenwood with 3 victories and a heap of top 10's. 2010 was definitely our best season by far and I can't wait to get amongst it again next year.

Havin' a go...

Well collegiate season is over and it's on to the domestic summer season of mostly crits. This year I'll be riding for the MOBRA Development team, it's a small squad with a modest budget but it's goal is to get us to as many races as possible and I'm stoked for the opportunity. More about the team at a later time though.
This weekend we are heading off to Champagne, Illinois for two days of criterium racing to kick off the summer season.
Until next time, take care.
Chev.

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