50/50

Slowly, week by week, I've been getting faster. A good chunk of that could probably be traced to continued recovery from busting myself up. It's hard to believe it's been almost a year.

Probably the biggest change for me, racing-wise, has come in the last week or two. For whatever reason — and I honestly have no idea what it is or why — I feel like I'm finally back in the right mindset. I was excited to race, knowing full well that it was going to be really, really painful.

Saturday — Capital City Criterium
This was the race where last year I made my return from face-diving. It was a 1/2/3 race last year, which means it was fast as hell. I hadn't done a ton of cornering before the race, so the speed freaked me out pretty quickly.

This year, after one warmup lap, I was good. I remembered all of the lines, all of the angles. I was psyched to mix it up.

In retrospect, I probably would have been better off lining up closer to the front. But official race time was different than the time on my watch, somehow, so I wasn't exactly ready to roll when they announced one lap left of the women's race before us.

I hustled to the car, swapped wheels, zipped over to the wheel pit and got in line. And when the whistle blew, I kicked my pedal ... three times. Ugh.

Once I got in, I got back in the pack pretty quick. Whew. Crisis averted. But then, about three laps in, I looked up and noticed there was a gap. Huh. I'd been hitting the corners hard and holding wheels and then ... the peloton just rolled away.

I went into chase mode, but blew pretty quickly. The HRM confirmed what I thought — we were going fast as hell. I regrouped with the Big Puma and a few others, and we started rolling up and picking up the remnants of the peloton.

In the end, Puma did a good chunk of the work and I just tried to hold on. I'm not entirely sure it would have been any different in the peloton. It looked like we were holding our gap well for most of the race, but I was so cross-eyed I wouldn't have known if we were two laps down.

In short, I was not last and I did not crash. But I didn't exactly go fast. And when we were done, i was soooo sore. The sit bones/taint region was in some serious trouble. It was a static, aggressive position for an hour. Ouch.

After drinking a ton of water and taking it easy the rest of the night, I was really looking forward to Sunday.

Sunday — Pioneers Park Grand Prix
The nature of Saturday's race made it a hard one for me. I'm just not ready for that constant, super-hard pace. And since I wasn't in the safety of the peloton, I was forced to work that much harder.

I knew Sunday would be more to my liking. A bit of uphill, a bit of downhill, a bit of a longer race. No 45-minute throwdowns here.

I planned on running my carbon wheels, and when I took a lap of the course an hour or so before the race, I knew it was going to be a good day for them. But as I was warming up on the trainer, I heard a really big bang. I must have had a pinch in the tube, and for whatever reason it ruptured while resting against the car. Huh.

No problem, though, as I always have three or four spare tubes with me. Turns out, though, that the bang blew the tire off the rim. In the process, it ripped the bead of the tire. So ... no carbon wheels for me. I wasn't going to mess with it — not when I had a perfectly good Dura-Ace/Ultegra setup going.

I got to the line and rolled right to the front. "No way I'm getting stuck this time," I thought. When the whistle blew, I clipped in, got rolling and led for the first third of the lap. It felt nice to get in and get rolling again. I knew I'd have to be on the ball to stay in the pack.

Yeah, that's where I am right now. Aiming for a pack finish. If more comes out of it, so be it. But before I can be on the podium, I have to be in the pack.

The attacks came where I figured they'd come, so I was ready to go most of the time. One interesting thing I noticed was gearing on the big hill. I'm more of a spinner, so my experience with this course told me I needed to go down to the small ring up the hill. Most everybody else big-ringed it every time. Huh.

Up and over the top with five or six laps left, Vaughn Pierce took off and nobody gave chase. As soon as we got over the worst of the hill, I threw it back into the big ring and took off after him. I knew it was a longshot, but I had to at least try something.

When I caught him and told him to keep rolling, our move was quickly countered by Jeff Kluck. And then it was countered again by Saturday's winner. Lots of desperate moments followed, and for a moment the pack rolled away from me.

I dug down into a pretty dark place and got back on in about 20 seconds, but it was close. I knew I had to play it smarter the rest of the way. With three laps left, another attack came on the hill. I got gapped again, and had to really fight with the tailwind to get back. I figured there'd be another surge as soon as I got on — there always is — but I lucked out. Whew.

Coming into the final lap, I knew it was going to be ugly. But I still felt pretty solid. Depending upon when and where the last attack happened, I might be able to do something.

Up the hill for the last time, the surge was bigger than it had been the rest of the day. I just didn't have enough snap to get on with it.

And that's where my only real "what if" moment of the weekend came. Maybe I should have tried to climb it in the big ring that last time? Bigger gear, but no reason to save anything. Also, the next guy after me was a few minutes back. So, really, I had nothing to lose.

Next time, I guess. I can't wait for next time.

(Now to go GamJams Midwest and check out a ton of photos from the weekend. The photo above was stolen from Mark.)