Broemmelsiek race

Sunday's race was an epic battle. Although the race had a pretty small turn out, with many notables, who would have seriously altered the race, not present. I've had a goal since last season of being competitive on my singlespeed in the expert category and today was good step towards that goal...missed the podium by just over 15 seconds. There's always some kind of afterthought post-race about how to do better and messing up such-and-such a situation, but that's all just water under the bridge. The important thing in my mind and for me in my life right now, is just getting out there and competing. Some days I may feel great, like today, and others I may feel awful and either quit or come extremely close to quitting.

I rode a 36x18 on what was a pretty perfect single speed course. I usually like more climbing, but today's course was almost like a cross race with never ending quick, sharp turns, little dips, and a very undulating gradient. I didn't pre-ride the course and honestly, I don't think a couple of more laps on a course makes that big of a difference, especially in a 6 lap race. Home field advantage on a trail that one rides a few times a week is a totally different story...huge advantage, but on a day like sunday, I'd rather try and ride 3rd or 4th wheel behind some really good riders and see what happens.

That's exactly what happened. Here are some cliff notes, laps were 20-25min and total race time for me was ~2:05:00 or something:
lap 1- 4th wheel following Bob Arnold, who was behind Ploch who was behind TK. Felt great. Gearing was perfect...HR was pretty mellow and legs felt very good after a solid week of training last week.
lap 2- Pass Bob, ride behind Ploch or TK
lap 3- Ploch drops chain, ride behind TK.
lap 4- don't know what happened but I still felt good at this point but I slipped in 3 corners riding behind TK. I think I just got super excited that I was in front of Ploch. Those falls hurt my ego and I actually got pretty pissed at myself because the slips seemed so silly and happened each time I caught back on to TK's wheel after prior fall. Mental slippage seemed to occur at that point. Doubt plus and 1:20 of pushing a big gear convinced me my legs were getting tired. At some point, Ploch caught back on a went around me.
lap 5- Got caught by Mark Gullet. See mindset as stated at the end of lap 4. He passed me.
lap 6- climb hill, see ploch stopped on side? He said he was cramping and we rode together for most of the last lap. I was hurting. Then almost at the end, he decided he wanted to see if he could catch Mark. I couldn't follow. The end.

Goal? Accomplished. Fun? hells yeah. Wifey? Present and rode her butt off in marathon! Teamates? TTM had 50% bad luck, Storve did his first race of the year and came out top 10, and there's talk of a new teamate ; )

Up next are the dirt crits! I love short racing.

July is a HUGE month for me. I have a massive piece of writing due and the month marks the 6month interval from my January treatment. Very crazy, but we still have no idea whatsoever if that treatment had any effect....it takes 6 months. 3rd week of July I head to MD-Anderson and will find out.