What a weird day, quite blog-worthy. I feel the need to talk about the race and the party separately. Cyclists will be able to tolerate my blabbing about the race. Party folk will like the second part. Partying cyclists might make it through the whole thing.
Race:
We start at 8am from Woodland Mound Park in Cincinnati. It starts and finishes from the same point; a gigantic 1 mile hill (hors category) to the entrance of the park. The race starts with a 30 mile flat portion and the last 45 miles is peppered with back-breaking climbs, none the least of which, the finishing climb into the park.
Weird thing #1: Some dude crashed in the first mile.
The race organizer, Scott (a.k.a. Godzulla) declared the first couple of miles "neutral" so we could get down the hill and through the point where the cop had traffic blocked off. So, since we weren't racing yet, we took it easy down the hill. Well, most of us did anyway. Some goofballs were bombing it. That's not a good idea because there is a sharp 90 degree left hand turn near the bottom. While I was descending, I see some guy bomb past me with the sharp turn approaching. "Easy", I told him. He then proceeded to jam on his brakes, lock up his rear wheel and bit the dust, hard. I took the inside line and avoided him. He looked okay and so I kept riding. But, he tacoed his wheel and that was the end of his day. That must have felt good.
Weird thing #2: The pro showed up, and he hurt us.
Actually, the "hurt us" part isn't so weird. Kirk Albers usually comes to this event and makes it a sort of pro-am. Kirk rode for Jelly Belly many years and now rides for Texas Roadhouse. I think he's bionic.
After the flat portion and a mandatory and very public "we have so many people you can't do nothing about it" roadside pee-break, we hit Thomas hill, which has a portion that kicks up to 28%. After this climb I was able to hang with Kirk and two other riders from Huntington Bank. This soon became 15 or so riders and before long we left the rest of the peleton in our dust.
Each successive climb acted like a distillation, selecting out the weaker climbers. By the time we had grunted through three tough climbs and 35 more miles , I was happy to see it was me, Kirk (holy shit, I hung with Kirk!), two riders from Huntington and a former teammate, Justin. We worked together in a paceline with Kirk dictating his bionic man pace of 25+ mph.
About 10 miles from the finish and on the second climb from the finish, Kirk Albers decides to declare Jihad on us. In the middle of the climb, he just stood up and took off. After the climb, he kept stomping out a insane pace and we just watched him get smaller and smaller and he rode away in the distance. The four of us remaining encouraged each other to work in a paceline and catch him. We thought we could reel him in, but as it turns out, Kirk just stayed out there in the distance, looking as small as a Jelly Belly Jelly Bean. We gave up the chase and he ended up smoking us by four minutes. We decided the four of us were racing for second place. Hey, what can we say? The guy's a pro.
Now, Justin and I are riding with the two Huntington guys, who are teammates. This makes Justin and I sitting ducks. I'm just waiting for them to work together and light us up with an attack. It never happened. The stronger Huntington guy, John talked about his legs feeling crampy, Justin was hanging his head. I was feeling okay and only mildly intoxicated by lactic acid. Maybe, if I was smart, I could snag second...
Wierd thing #3: I attacked early and it (sort of) worked.
We rode a moderate pace and approached the left hand turn to the last mile up the gigundo hill to the finish. We all congratulated each other on a good ride, shared some sort of "see you at the top" salutation and geared down for the climb. I looked John and see he's goofing around with his water bottle. I decide to give it everything I had and in a slow-twitch fit of rage, I almost busted nut sprinting up the first part of the hill. I overhear John say "what's he doing?" and then "Let's go boys". They chased me about half way up the climb, drew me in a bit and then got no closer. Just then, Justin, Mr. Head-Hangin' faker-boy goes dieseling right past me. I tried to make a run on him but he got me at the finish by a few meters.
The turncoat bastard. :) It's all fun. No worries.
I came home third. I was more than happy with that result. Justin is a stud cat 1 and as I've already stated, Kirk Albers is the Bionic Man. I'm content to finish behind them.
This ended a great season for me. And, it makes a guy very thirsty. Which leads to the next portion of my lil' story.
Post-Race Party:
Ever go to a party that made you not feel as strange as you thought you were because there were people there who were much more messed up than you are? It was that kind of party. The race organizer, Scott, is a rather strange fellow. There was a pig head and a goat head displayed on the picnic table. They both ended up being tossed around by drunk people and then made it's way into the campfire in some sort of burnt offering type ritual. There was a statuette of a fertility god.
Lots of outlandish food. I ate a chicken foot. I ate goat meat. I ate antelope or somethin' or ruther. And, what's even more gross...I ate a hot dog.
It's safe to say I was also over-served in the alcohol department. I hung and drank with my teammates for a long time. Had to have some "quiet time" in the car to recover did I.
Yep. I'm discovering that this part was a blur. Kinda makes it hard to blog about. So, I'll just say it was fun, thanks for reading and have a nice day.
Tailwinds!
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