Cold Toes-Part Deux

Saturday marked the second leg of our (Evolution Cycling) training race series. I actually felt pretty good this week and had a decent week of training and was looking forward to the race. The weather was considerably better this week than last and brought at a somewhat larger field. We had 5 guys on our side (Ryan, Chewy, Ugh, Spam, and me). I was feeling so good in fact that I went to my "quiver" before the race and picked out the Pinarello for the day.

Also found out that the race was going to run counter clockwise today, as opposed to clockwise last week, so I made sure I got in some extra training laps to get used to the new layout. The first noticeable thing was that the first turn went straight into a headwind which I knew would cause some separation in the pack, a corner is bad enough, but a corner into the wind is not good. Anyway, the race began and I started near the back, wasn't in the mod to get to the line 10+ minutes early just to get a front spot. As the field headed towards the first corner I moved up a few spots on the inside and was getting towards the middle of the pack to get some coverage into the headwind along the back. As the group approached the final turn into the tailwind finish line I moved up on the left side a passed a number of people to get near the top 10 going into the first corner again. I had good positioning and was ready to settle into the pack when the two riders in front of me touched wheels. And when I say touch, that is a bit of an understatement. The one guys rear deraileur ripped spokes from the other guys front wheel before it loked like it ripped off itself. I had to get on the brakes hard and unclip to prevent piling into them. No one in the group went down but after I clipped back in and got going, the peleton was about 100 meters away and I was inthe headwind by myself. I stepped it up to try to catch back on and made contact into the final turn when everyone jumped towards tthe finish line. I lost contact and that was where I was going to stay the rest of the race. Being a training race I just kept my pace steady and rode out the last 6-7 laps, picking up an occasional rider here and there as they popped off the back.

The one good thing about being dropped off the back in that turn was that I missed the crash in the next turn that took a few people out. One guy from PoWER went down pretty hard and had some road rash to show for his day. He seemed to be doing well post-race so that is always a good thing.

The third and final episode of the Cold Toes Trilogy is next weekend, we shall see how it goes. Evo should be out in full force with our new kits. Should be a good time.

Later