December 6, 2006

Don't Mess With The DOT

I guess I never did a race report for the Capital Cross, I guess I was too excited about the drive home on I95 and the phone call from my car owner wondering what a $44 fine was doing in his mailbox with my picture on it from the PA DOT. Lesson learned, don't take the EZ pass lane if you don't have an EZ pass - even by accident. Risk life, limb, and put everyone else in danger, but don't skip a $.50 toll -even if it is 5 lanes away. Ok, done with that subject.

Capital Cross went OK I guess. I felt good, road decent and got beat by a former Swiss U23 national champion. I had no clue at the time who I was racing, but twice he and Hamblen put themselves off the back after failing to ride the hill and twice Muller came right back to me without too much of a problem. I knew it was going to be tough after that, Muller was a bit stronger than I was, but I let him do a majority of the work during the middle of the race to make up for it. It came down to the three of us on the last lap when we hit the run/ride up. I hadn't been riding it, it was sometimes faster to ride it, but they weren't doing it cleanly too often and on the last lap I again elected conservative and ran it. Muller hit it dead on and rode clean away from me gaining the 3 seconds he won by. I rode by Hamblen in strong pursuit but never made it back to him and rolled in for 2nd just off the back. I suppose I should have been more aggressive and tried riding it, or I should have come into the section first and done a slow mow dismount to mess up his line and force a dismount, but I didn't and he just happened to ride it cleaner than he had the whole race before and it paid off.

I'm really looking forward to the two races this weekend. I put in my last hard week of training last week so I'm taking it easy this week and hopefully I'll be good and fresh for the full weekend of racing in Rhode Island. Last year was really cold and snowy, this year has barely been cold at all yet. Sunday's race has two brutal beach sections, one is super long and then you have to climb a sand bank to get out which was pretty interesting the last few laps I remember. I've been working on my running a lot more so hopefully it pays off.
Only 4 races till the offseason.
Tristan

1 comment:

gwadzilla said...

it was a very exciting race to watch

great job

rock the course at the nationals

that Swiss guy clearing the barriers

a picture from my blog

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/6879/258/1600/810973/04HOP.jpg