Tuesday, August 09, 2011

THE ROCK

I didn't win the battle of Cam-Rock, but I'm ready to do battle for the big Rock next weekend!

Looks like T and I were pretty relaxed on the start line!
















The Battle of Cam-Rock was actually a really cool race. I was ready to go to battle. Then the shock of chasing Shriver up the first climb hit me. I looked down to see HR 160, but it felt like a max effort. Ewww I needed a better warm up. I suffered for the first 10 minutes until the body got going. The pace settled after NG was off the front. I was content to recover a bit and get to know the course. Starting lap 2 it started to rain and it got slippery fast. I stopped going up a climb to take my glasses off and was gapped by about 3 seconds. No big deal....I come into the next singletrack section to see Mike P splayed across the trail. I checked up on the brakes and probably crashed identical to what Mike had just done. Tristan was gone. Mike got up and started going again as I was untangling my mess. My hammy cramped and I smashed my left ankle on something when I crashed...which then caused my left achilles to start cramping. I started going again....caught Mike P and went by him to start the chase. I put in a big effort and was closing on T the entire race. I think I scared him by the finish when the gap was getting close to 10 seconds! But it wasn't enough...another 2nd place. It's looking like T will be the first to get 4 WORS win.

After the race I hooked up with Shriver. It was cool to hang with him and get the insiders scoop on what goes down on Team Radio Shack during the tour. I also made it out to dinner with Pete and Meredith from Athens Bicycle. Everyone was in town for Trek World and it was pretty cool to hang with friends in Madison after the race. Monday morning I was off to the Madison airport to pick up some more friends who own a shop in SLO, CA. Then I hit the big show. Again it was great to see all my friends at TREK. After walking around the show a bit I cruised over to headquarters to hang with my buddy Demo Ken and score some new 2012 Bontrager rubber. The perfect new tread pattern for O2S! I hooked up with the Athens Bicycle crew one more time for a really fun spin on some '012 Fuel EX's....those things are so fun so ride. You can jump...land on anything and not even worry about it with the new DRCV technology in the front fork.


















I also squared away all the final sponsorhip details for the upcoming cross season. I now have everything ready to build up 2 brand new TREK Cronus CX's. I can't wait to start training on the cross bike. First things first though...O2S in 4 days!

No comments: