Indio/Fill

Well, had a bit of a bummer race over in Indio this past weekend - but I did give it a go! Sometimes you roll the dice a bit, or talk yourself out of something when it comes to the finale. I'm still kickin' myself a bit for how things went down during the Indio trip.

First things first, though, before I get to the finish... Pretty easy first half of the race (small field out in Indio - maybe 40 guys?), a small group of ~6 got away around midway with good representation from the big squads... I was thinkin' about going across the gap, but Eddie Monnier (yeah, he was pedalin' this weekend out in the desert) and a couple other guys had a similar idea, so I pretty much followed their wheels and basically just rolled through to help bring it back together.

It got kind of hard a bit later on with some attacks, and that's when the socal points leader (richard c) from the Amgen/Giant squad punched it pretty good - I followed him, and one and a half laps of futility later, we were re-absorbed with just over three laps to go.

I recovered quickly, and knew I needed to slot myself into the top 3 coming out of the last corner (head crosswind for the last 300m or so) - well, the group totally slowed down in the last few turns, and I talked myself out of just drillin' it with 500m to go... Instead, I rolled the dice and came up snake eyes in the finale. Way too far back and going' way to slow for this type I slow twitch guy to have a chance at a placing.

Learned something on that deal - again! I'm a caveman, remember...

Sunday, I flogged myself doing a "fill" ride through deluz - nary a flat spot on that ride - so it starts to hurt a wee bit near the end. Been awhile since I've done one of those - I keep tellin' myself that I needed to do one of those "fill" rides in order to have the sensations fresh in my memory before I chipped away at this series of articles a bit more:

http://www.biketechreview.com/op_ed/stripped_down_2.htm

no more excuses now! Stay tuned!