Thursday afternoon we emerged from our digs at the Travelodge after sleeping off the long drive the night before. The scenery is awesome down here, big green rolling hills that look like mountains, coming from Iowa. We arrived at Devil's Den State Park for Andrew and Will "Willadillo" to contest the PRO 1/2 climb trial. As we waited to descend the course in the vehicle, we saw the PROs cross the finish line on top of the climb. As these hardened mercenaries were whimpering and fighting for air at the top, I hoped when my time came that I could invite the hurt in as these guys had.
Andrew was the first of our team to out of the gate. He would later say that he had no idea what time he got as his computer and his head were "all over the place." As Will correctly pointed out, when Andrew says that, it can mean that he did well. Andrew pulled in a strong time of 10:14 for the 680ft of climbing concentrated in 2.5miles.
Will went later for another good time of 10:30. Their thoughts on the stage "it sucked but that is how a time trial is supposed to feel."
Since my racing does not begin until Saturday, I was able to ride around the "mountain passes" of the area just enjoying the day and getting dialed in on my new Giant. This area is seriously beautiful and the roads are awesome.
After a good night's sleep we got up for road race #1. This race began in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Fayetteville. It was pretty cool to see everyday people take a few minutes out of their day to cheer on the start of the race before they went about their business at Wal-Mart. Iowa has a good cadre of representation down here at Joe Martin. In addition to us from WOB/B2U, Jeff Bradley, Lou Waugman, Paul Deninger, Carson Cristian, and Dewey Dickey were all showing up for the Iowa teams.
Today's stage was a 110mile loop through the hills around Fayetteville. It was one big loop with rolling enclosures, very cool since most of our races are multiple laps of the same courses.
As the race came in there was a few minutes between a group of about 20 and then a large remainder of the race came in. I looked up from my spot on the uphill finish to see Andrew charging up towards the finish with the others biting at his heels.
They guys looked pretty slammed when I caught up to them at the finish. They said that the pace was relentless the whole day and that the wind in addition to the long climbs took a toll. As I am writing this, Will is having periodic conniptions about not making the decisive break, but the truth of the matter is, it was a hard day.
On tap for tomorrow is my first day of racing with the climb TT and then the road race and Will and Andrew have another road race. I'll fill y'all in then.
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