Redbud, Cors #2, and the Exfuse crit

The Redbud is not a real race (although it thinks it is) so I'll keep it short. Rob , Jeremy and me participated, rode hard, broke up the field to bits, had fun, kept riding, and I for one was sore for 2 days afterwards. Good race simulation workout.

The CORS event #2 was time trial at Overholser. The same course as the OKC Velo TT series thats currently going on. I made a couple of major changes to the frankenbike. Aaron Smathers was gratious enough get my fit dialed in on the bike, and I must admit, it feels 10X better (thanks Aaron!). I've been working on a rear wheel disc cover modification, but after working on it for the 2 days prior to the event, all I had to show for it was some torn up hands. The weather conditions were much better than the last TT, so I basically used the same wheel configuration- Flashpoint 80mm front-Powertap with 32 hole open pro rear.

Once again the race went well for our team. Jeremy was able to borrow a bike and got 1st. Rob and I both took a minute off our last times to get 2nd and 3rd. We all set new personal best times. It was 1 of my goals this season to break into the 17's on this course and I got it with a 17:53. Hopefully I can get my wheel covers finished or borrow a disc for the next TT.

The Exfuse crit ended up being one of the strangest races I've ever done. The race course is on a housing addition loop out on 122nd and N.Eastern, but with no houses built yet. Around 8/10 of a mile loop with 2 good climbs. It pretty much rained the entire race. Park Place had 3 riders there: Cagle, Waddel, and Rempel. We had 4 with Jeremy, Rob, Parks and me. There were 3 or 4 Tulsa wheelmen plus some other strong local and regional riders. I think there were 16 starters altogether.

The race started off very well. Somehow Rob, Jeremy and I got in a 5 man break with Waddel and Rempel. At first the teams just kept attacking each other back and forth, which was working at first to distance ourselves from the rest of the field. Somewhere around 15 minutes in, we had a HUGH gap on the rest of the field. We let Jeremy roll away with Justin Rempel and I thought Waddel would not be ok with that and chase them down, but it ended up being Rob, Waddel and I in a second breakaway group. In hindsight, Rob and I should have kept the pressure on as waddel just sat on. We had such a large time gap that we assumed we had a top 5 in the bag. I knew Waddel was trying to slow our group down to allow Chad Cagle to leap frog up into our group. Sure enough, I see 2 guys chasing and closing fast.

Rob and I started to go hard again trading pulls each lap, but it wasn't enough as Cagle ended up catching us. The next several laps were rough as Rob and I took an old fashioned beating. The kind where they hit us a lot more than we hit them. Somehow we managed to survive all their attacks and even throw in a few of our own but, that type of riding is not efficient and even though we had lapped several riders, Jeremy and Justin managed to catch us with 2 laps to go.

I'm not sure if everyone knew exactly what was going on, but 3 riders left from the main field jumped on Jeremy and Justin and got a free ride back to our group. So with 2 laps to go, there's 2 riders a lap ahead of everyone and 7 guys left to fight it out over 3rd through 9th. To say I was furious at this point would be an understatement. How could we have blown a guaranteed 3 riders in the top 5? Instead of keeping cool and missing out on an opportunity to go heads up with 2 of the best sprinters around, I let emotion take over and punched it chasing an attack just as we were starting the last lap. All that accomplished was a nice lead out for the sprinters and the lucky tag along riders.

Still despite everything, we had a good race, we made money, we learned a lot, and had a good time in the process. For some strange reason, I really like racing in the rain. It's easy to place the blame on others but, the 3 of us were equally responsible for not finishing as well as we could have. Sometimes you have to make mistakes in order to learn how to do it a better way.

I guess its time to reset my FTP. I set a new 60 minute personal power record and my intensity factor for the 1 hour was 1.1 something. 2 more TTs this week and a crit on Sunday in Dallas.