Ohio State Road Race - cat 3

Woke up at 4:00 after five hours of sleep so I could be at Caesar's Creek by 8:30. I slept a bit in the car (dad drove), but nothing really restful. got to the park and it was 45 degrees. cold! It warmed up a good bit by the start though, a little under 60. I knew it would warm up so I just wore a thin long sleeve base layer under the jersey. First of four laps was pretty calm, a few weak attacks went but they were all brought back within a mile. The hill wasn't bad. Everybody said the first time up was the hardest. I definitely semmed the easiest to me, maybe just because I worked so hard the rest of the race. Three miles into the second lap, another attack went, but everyone went with it so it didn't get far. Then an Anthem guy attacked and everybody sat up. He was pullling away fast, but I knew I could catch him, so I went. I figured that if I could draw out a Team Dayton rider, nobody would chase. Those two teams together made up at least half the field of forty-five or so. Nobody from Dayton went with me, instead the lone Lake Effect rider came up. We worked together pretty well except the Anthem guy wouldn't do any work. He said he was hurting real bad, and I could see it in his form, but if that was the case, I don't know why he attacked in the first place. About ten miles in we were caught by a bridge from Nail City. We had a pretty good gap but it was hard with just the two of us working. Nail City was trying for the KOM, so he agreed to concede the finish if we gave him the KOM points. I was shooting for the overall anyways and didn't need any attacks within our group of four. We go another five miles up the hill and past the start line, and I can see the pack brought us to about ten seconds. I stop taking hard pulls, and we get pulled in after another mile or so. I was ready for the counter but when it went we didn't stay away long at all. The rest of lap three I rested, trying to get some energy back for the finish. I had drifted to the back and didn't notice a break go with Dayton, Anthem, and Stark (I think) until they had fifteen or twenty seconds. I made a few attacks but stopped when nobody would go with me. There were a few splits in the field, but I always stayed in the front so those weren't a problem. By the time we reached the hill on the last lap, we had brought back the break. Everyone busted it up the hill and by the top the last twenty or so in the field went down to thirteen. With a mile to go, the same kid that attacked the feed zone at the Jr. State RR tried to go off the front. He got brought back and John Lowry countered. He ended up soloing to the win as I surfed wheels trying to get a good position for the sprint. I went into it fifth, passed two guys, wound up my junior gears, and got passed back to finish fifth. pretty good I think considering I had five h ours' sleep, no teammates and did a heck of a lot of work. one week off then cross season!

Nothin' To Do

Here I am, sitting in the school library with nothing to do. I guess I'll write about the two months since my last post. First thing was the Junior State Crit, the day before I got my knee stitches out. I got fifth, I think. Not super, but at least I beat the kids that sat in the whole race. Next week was Zoar. I had one good attack on the third lap, bridging up to a three-man break, but everybody else wanted to be there too, so that didn't work. I couldn't really recover after that and got dropped on the last hill. I probably could have caught the field if it wasn't for my 52x14 junior gearing. Excuses, excuses. The Milk Race didn't go much better. I was, once again, off the front for a bit, only to be dropped a lap later. Junior Road States was better. A few guys from around here made it hard (esp. Tony) until Team Dayton attacked in the feed zone and made Tony lose his bottles. The kid ended up winning, too. That sucks. Anyways, I got third after leading out the sprint. Decent finish and I felt pretty good, so that was OK. August 23 was Valley City. Not much to report, I just hung in the field while Jeremy Grimm solo'd almost the whole race for the win. Greenford was last weekend, agreat race run by Elves & More with lots of help from Stark Velo. Definitely reccommended if they do the race again next year. There were fifteen to twenty 1/2/3's, a pretty good turnout for a first-year event but they definitely deserved more. Anyways, I only lasted four laps, but they were probably my best four laps yet. Second lap I was off the front with Ray, Matt Weeks, and Dan Quinlan. Ohhhhh it was so fast, but we were brought back anyways. Things slowed down a bunch on the third lap until Batke and an IRMC got away. It looked for a while like they would be brought back, but when they had about 25 seconds, Matt Weeks went to bridge up. I went with him and we went fast for a few miles, but we were brought back. About a mile after we were caught, I dropped. Nice try, though, I think. After the break came back, the IRMC guy dropped and I rode with him foor a while. He pulled off when we came to the S/F, I rode a lap alone, and then I finished DFL (9th or so, lots of guys pulled out) with a guy from ProGraphics.

Only two weeks until states! I'm feeling pretty good, I'm thinking a month's worth of long rides and no racing should get me itching to go fast.

-Russ

It Hasn't Been That Long

Well, yeah it has. Anyways, everybody probably forgot all about this tag thing already.

So here we go, countdown style.

Number Six: I'd rather drink warm water that anything else.

Number Five: I'm seventeen. Not a big deal, really. Everybody just thinks I'm older.

Number Four: I think recumbents are sweet. Not the big, long, cushy touring 'bents with fat, old guys on top. No. I'm takling about 50 MPH, full carbon racing machines. Trikes are even better since you can go to sleep and not fall over.

Number Three: I know how to have a good time. The secret is that a good party is spontaneous. Just take a strobe light, some music, and a dark room and you have yourself a party.



Number Two: My threshold wattage is... Yeah right, like I'm actually going to tell you. I did do my quarterly power test yesterday, though.

Number One: I was the youngest person ever to have an Ohio fishing license. At least as far as I know. There was a newspaper article about it, framed at my grandpa's house.

I'm probably going to hold off on tagging more people until BSNYC comes back from vacation. I think I have a chance if I get a podium spot on the comments.

-Russ

Hello Again

It's been a long time since my last post, almost two weeks. I don't really know where all the time went. Mostly yardwork, I think. I've done two races since Grandview. The Twin Sizzler was nothing new. Same nasty roads, same unmarshalled intersections. I dominated the expert 18 and under by at least four minutes, but that's not really saying much since only two other kids signed up and one didn't show. My dad rode his first race and wasn't even close to last. Better than he thought he would do and way better than I did at my first race (I was lapped twice at Euro Hill). Mom ran the 5k and had a pretty good time, adjusting for the cop who stopped runners every two minutes or so (within sight of the finish!) to let a line of cars through.

Sunday mom and I went to Wilmington for the Team Dayton Crit, my first race as a cat 3. I was doing pretty well, sitting between fifth and tenth wheel pretty much the whole race, and I made the one break that had any chance of sticking. Too bad nobody wanted to work. Also too bad I crashed on the last lap. We were going around turn one and the guy in front of me went way wide, almost falling off the road. I was on the outside of his wheel and saw it coming so I went into the grass, figuring it wasn't a big deal and I'd just hop back on in a minute. So I was on my way back up onto the pavement when something on the side of the road caught my front tire and put an inch-and-a-half long hole in the sidewall. I blew out half on the road and half off and totally lost it. I went down mostly on the grass, but must've been run over two or three times. For sure somebody hit my ribs, right where my heart rate strap goes. It knocked the wind out of me pretty bad and now my chest says POLAR across the front (it's backwards though, it took me a while to figure that one out). My knee went into somebody's bladed spokes, that needed six stitches but definitely could have been worse. I can still bend it all the way, so it shouldn't keep me off the bike at all. No broken bones either. Just a little cosmetic damage to the bike, one big-ish dent and a few medium-deep scratches. Dad and I took it to Bike Authority today, just in case. Props to them for getting everything looked at and truing my wheels in almost no time at all, thanks guys! Good news is that I felt amazing during the race, everyone around me was breathing harder than I was. Mom says she could hear it from the side of the road. I think I'll be looking to score at least a few points by the end of the season!

New party music's up if anyone cares about that.

All for now

-Russ

College Search Round 2 + TdGrandview

Not much happening last week except that Mom and I went on a little road trip looking at schools.

Day 1: Bucknell, Lewisburg PA (Amish country)
Definitely my favorite. Everybody was nice. There's a little town only 3 blocks away, definitely riding/walking distance. I don't really like the big city, so that's definitely a plus. The roads are amazing, with smooth pavement and almost no traffic. I rode for three hours after our tour and got passed by at most twenty cars.

Day 2: Lehigh and Lafayette, Easton PA
Definitely my least favorite. Easton seems to be a very industrial kind of area, not good for riding. Nobody said hi when we were there, I know that might seem a little nitpicky but I think it says a lot about the people. In a bad way.

Day 3: Princeton, NJ
Decent, but disappointing. All the buildings look great from the outside, but they wouldn't let us go in anywhere. It almost seemed like they were hiding something. Maybe the insides of the buildings are kind of nasty, and they just don't want you to see. I hope that isn't the case, but that's what I have to assume I guess.

Day 4: Swarthmore, Philadelphia PA
Nice, but not what I'm looking for. The campus is beautiful, more like a park than a school, but the town of Swarthmore is dying and it seems like the big attraction for everybody is the proximity to Philly. There really isn't anywhere to ride within fifteen miles, either.

Grandview Crit: not much to report, really. I got down there in time to watch Jim G and Rich in the Masters. Rich looked to be in position to place until he crashed in turn three of the last lap. Kinda like me at Garrett Wonders last year. Anyways, in the 3/4 race we had six guys from NE Ohio rolling together: Me, Noah, Jim G, Cameron (RGF), Jared (Stark), and Matt (TT1, fresh off of RAAM). The start was insanely fast, or maybe it just seemed that way because I warmed up an extra lap and lined up last. I knew I had to move up, so I started working on that. Of course, I'd rather move up in the draft than go around in the wind, so that's what I did, just picking my way between the little gaps that opened up. That went great, until one guy moved over into me, which didn't really bother me but totally freaked him out, so he hit his brakes a little and came back into my handlebars (not on purpose, I hope). So that almost took me out within the first five laps, but it didn't, so that was exciting. Lap 7 or 8 there was a move that didn't look good for us so I attacked to try and bring that back. Lap eleven-ish there was a prime, and I was in good position so I went for it and lost. That totally wasted me for the rest of the race. I tried to stay up at the front where the cornering's easier but I kept sliding back. Fast forward seven laps and we have one lap to go. I've hung on for the whole race and have kinda recovered, when in the last corner, some guy rolls his tire and takes out a whole row of riders. Thankfully, I ended up scooting right between a guy and his bike, and I didn't go down. Unfortunately, that left me with no chance to sprint, securing my back-of-the-field finish. At least I didn't go down. There were at least four wrecks at as many near misses during the race. Try again next week at the Team Dayton Crit.

-Russ

New Site

The old Summit Freewheelers website was getting a little bit, well, old. So Bob Iden offered to help us out and set up a new one. It's not too much different, but it looks a lot nicer and a lot of the pages can be edited by club members. Real nice, I think. Thanks Bob.

-Russ

Like a Balloon

The quality of life on my end of things has only been going up lately, and now I'm convinced it's because of all the stretching, sleeping, and other healthy stuff I've been doing. This week was pretty amazing, once again. My dad and I rode the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure (GOBA), a seven day ride with 50 miles/day and 100 on Thursday. The weather was perfect. There wasn't one drop of rain the whole week, at least not while I was awake. The Tour of Ohio always has a crit stage in one of the same towns (Mount Vernon this year) that GOBA is staying. That's always fun to watch. The course was Tym's "Mt. Vernon Classic", a great course around the square, downhill through an "S", up a brick section, and back to the square. After the Tour stage, there was a cat 4/5 race. I entered even though I already rode 55 miles, figuring it was my last chance to do a 4 race. The first lap was hot, but everybody wanted to take the corners slow and I was pretty sure I could do the whole course without brakes (thanks, cyclocross!). There was an early attack that brought out about five guys, including me. On the second lap, everybody hurt, and they slowed down more than usual for the corner into the bricks. I sprinted out of the corner, up the bricks and around the wide turn to the S/F, hoping to draw out one guy that I could ride with for a while and try to drop later. Well, nobody came with me, and I had already burned up too many matches to quit, so I went solo. I put about two seconds on the field per lap for about six laps just by not touching the brakes, then they quit chasing and I lapped everybody. It was just like a juniors race, now that I'm thinking about it. Anyways, I came away with a $10 prime, a pair of Tym's Torelli carbon handlebars , and my first win of the season. It's about time!

-Russ

PS: new party music