The great big SDSR Turd

Well, that sure was craptastic.

I was looking forward to San Dimas. I had it targeted on my calendar. I thought I had prepared well for it. Usually, I can climb. I sucked.

Let's start with the time trial. The week before, my team went up for a little recon on the hill. I posted a time of 14:15 from the gate to the finish. Add a mintue to that for the stretch from the start to the gate, and I could have conceivably finished with a time right around 15 minutes. That would have put me in a solid top 20 spot heading into a road race made for riders like me.

On race day, I got a good warm up - not that it was too difficult given the 90 degree weather that greeted us as start time neared. I got to the line a minute or so prior to my start time ready to go. When I got the word to ride, I took off fast. Maybe a bit too fast. Halfway up the climb, right after catching my 30 second guy, I could feel my legs and lungs start to complain. Not long after, the nuclear bomb exploded. Women and children ran. DEFCON 4 was reached. Threat level orange. Bicycle speed decreased. Severely. I struggled up the climb for a finish of 16:24. Bleh. The email from our team's sponsor that asked "What happened to you today?" didn't help to ease the pain.

So, after the stellar performance Friday, all we had left to do was go for stage wins in the road race and crit. I hooked up with Mark before the race and discussed possible taking a go of it and trying to turn the race into something other than a 80 man field sprint. It was a great idea. Would have worked too, if my legs weren't heavier than they were the day before. The race hurt way more than it should have. I led out our guy for the green jersey in the first hot spot, and it took me the entire lap to recover after. I sat in for a couple laps, and then tried to pull our KOM hope up the climb to get some points. That effor did me in. I sucked wind the rest of the race until the final climb, when A-bomb #2 for the weekend hit. I rolled in a minute after the leaders.

Sunday was more of the same. Legs felt great at the start - at least better than they rightly should have given the performance of the prior two days. Then, in the first points sprint of the day, some guy clips a pedal and takes me down with him. I came down awkward on my shoulder, which was sore the rest of the race. After getting pushed back in, it was hard to get out of the saddle. That relegated me to just riding around in circles for the rest of the day. At least we had Tommy roll home second to a way-too-fast-for-a-seventeen-year-old Justin Williams. So the weekend wasn't a total waste for the team. Just for me.

Thus, I came home, took a huge dump, named it SDSR, flushed it, and started to get ready for Indio in 2 weeks. So much for this weekend.