I'm not going to lie. As I'm writing this, I'm pretty sore. The masters race on Sunday didn't work out very well. I'm not sure why, but I never got really motivated to do Sundays race. I started in the very back of the 60 or so guys that were in attendance, but I didn't think it would be too big of a deal to move up. It wasn't too bad, but I was making most of my progress on cry baby hill. Probably not the best idea in the long run. The first 5 or so laps felt easy, and I probably pushed it a little too hard. It wasn't long before I found myself up towards the front, but starting to get a little winded. I guess if there's a different element to the Sunday Tulsa Tough course, for one it's a hard course already, but with all the folks cheering on crybaby hill, it's easy to over smoke it with the adrenalin and all.
Anyhow, a couple of moves went up the road and I decided to just stay patient and save it for the end. A few more went, and I just got caught out of position and somewhat out of gas. That's one thing about masters racing. The majority of the field may not be stronger than yourself, but a lot of them are salty veterans, and they know how to hit you when you're vulnerable. By the time the last few laps were winding down, I found myself in a group of 15-20 guys, plus a group of 8-12 I think up the road. Pretty de-motivating, but I figured I'd just go for the best money spot I could.
On the last lap I got into a move with 3 other guys. I figured I would just drag race them down the last straight, but in the last corner, some guy panicked on the inside of me and hit his brakes. He started fishtailing and pretty much pushed me wide in corner and I went up the curb and into one of the tent supports. So I pretty much got passed back by all the guys I had some time on and jacked up my ankle. It's not sprained, I just smacked it on my pedal or something. Pretty swollen and black and blue.
Still a fun weekend. This is typically the time of year where I take a little summer break. I think mentally, it would be good, but physically, I feel good.
Here's a few videos that Rob took if you've got a few hours to spare.
Day 1 Friday night - My favorite course
Day 2 Saturday - epic crash at 6 laps to go
Day 3 Sunday - I wasn't in this race (cat 1/2), but it's a nice view of what the riverside course is like with the infamous cry baby hill!
Not a great day today. We had 135 riders today, and it definitely seemed like it. There's always a mad scramble to the start line as soon the previous race is over. I guess some guys took off a little to soon. Naturally, it caused a big chain reaction and everybody rushed to the start line. There were still a couple of girls on the course and the announcer guy pretty much reamed all the cat 1/2's.
I'm not sure what they expect to happen. Maybe the race officials should work on staging control a little better. Especially when they overbook the race.
Anyway, I started pretty close to the back. I was pretty much doing my normal try and find the best places to make moves and so on. I had gotten up into the top 30 or so, when I got caught up in my first crash of the day. I didn't go down, but I pretty much came to a stop. A bunch of guys got a free lap. I just kept going, but I lost at least 50 positions. The rest of the race was pretty uneventfull. I just tried to conserve and move up when it was easy. It started to get crazy the last 20 minutes. I almost crashed again with 8 laps to go. Some guy crossed over my front wheel and I got sideways and had to put a foot down, but I didn't crash.
Right after we got past 6 laps to go, I was railing the outside of turn 1 trying to get some spots. As we came out of turn 2, there was a massive wreck and there was no way to avoid it. I got pretty lucky in that I went flying, but I landed on top of some guy so I didn't get any road rash. Just a few bruises and a mildly torn up, but still race able bike. The free laps stopped at 6 to go, so my day was over. Pretty disappointing.
I'm gonna give the masters race a go tomorrow. It starts at 11:55.
Pretty fun race today. In addition to having the most riders of any criterium,(120+)I've ever done, it was also the fastest with a 29 mph average. I dodged a bunch of wrecks. Really, the racing was pretty sketchy overall. My positioning wasn't too bad. Not great, but I think I generally stayed in the top half most all of the race. It seemed like the only way to really move up was surfing through the middle. The last 2 laps were crazy fast. I ended up 38th. Hopefully I'll have some photos and maybe video by the end of the weekend.
This is the entire King of Moore crit video. The race and the course are pretty self explanatory. It was a little sketchy in a couple of spots due to being wet in some spots from the rain the night before.
A rider went off the front early and made it stick. 3 more guys took off towards the end. I missed getting in that move, but oh well. I did win a sweet Oakley prime lap and won the field sprint for a 5th.
The big Tulsa Tough is this weekend, actually tonight as I'm writing this. I think I'll bring my camera and try to get an on board video from tonight or tomorrow.
I'm trying something a little different this year. I'm going to do the cat 1/2 races on Friday and Saturday, but the masters race on Sunday.
The weekend started off with the much anticipated OKC Pro-Am Classic. This was definitely a high priority race when I made up my race calender at the beginning of the year. This was the first year for this event, and I really hope it grows and keeps happening every year for a long time because it's a really cool race. The area in Downtown OKC is unique in itself. There's a lot of history on Broadway Ave. - AKA "Automotive Alley". as it's one of the oldest streets in the city. The Midtown area is pretty sweet also. The whole area seems to be growing rapidly with new businesses and loft apartments being added every month it seems.
The DNA guys did a TON of work to make the weekend happen, and I would say they went above and beyond what could have been expected for a first year high caliber event, I thought it was great.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous going into this race. Every day, I ride part of the course on my way to work as it's on my commute route. Ever since I knew about the race and course layout, it was fun to hit that 10th street to Broadway corner really fast and pretend it was the finish, so it was nice knowing extra details about the course. I guess the nerve wracking part was the fact there were so many people I knew at the race. Friends, family, co-workers and such. Once we got racing it was no big deal.
My buddy Judson Copeland took these sweet photos
I would guess there were around 40 cat 2's that started the race. I'm not sure why, but it seemed really hard to find a sweet spot out of the wind. Maybe the way the wind was swirling around the buildings in the area? I don't know, but I do know it strung the field out a lot and the attrition rate was pretty high as a lot of guys got pulled or just quit.
The race was 75 minutes long, so I really wanted to be conservative the first 45 minutes or so. It was pretty tough because the race was pretty active with lots of attacks. I thought the race would probably stay together since the roads were so wide, but that wasn't the case. A group of 2 guys took off very early in the race. I tried to get into a couple of moves that didn't go anywhere. I did get a prime somewhere around the midway point. It felt pretty easy to make passes when you needed to.
Going for a $50 prime
Anyway, I missed the winning move that went pretty late in the race. A group of 4 guys got away, and bridged up to the other 2 guys. Once the field sat up with 2 laps to go, I knew the best there was to get at that point was 7th, well, I didn't know the exact number of guys up the road, but I knew it was at least 5.
The last lap was pretty chaotic. I started pretty far back, so I was in a little bit of panic mode. I was passing guys pretty aggressively. The furthest SW corner of the course was a downhill high speed tailwind white knuckler. I got a really good run coming out of it, passed a few guys, and carried it through to the next corner. I kind of took an outside-in line, and was weaving through traffic making more passes. This is when the biggest bummer of the race happened. My team mate Rob had his go pro camera on, and it looks like as I was coming through, another team mate of mine moved left, which caused me to move left as I was passing Rob and my buddy Andy. I felt my hip kind of clip Andy's bars, and I guess it either got him off balance and he overlapped his front wheel over my back wheel, or I may have just chopped him altogether. I'm not really sure because it happened so fast. Either way, Andy went down pretty hard. It definitely wasn't intentional, and I still feel pretty horrible about it.
I ended up passing a couple more guys, and was sitting about 6th in the field coming into the last corner. I passed everybody and was closing on the last guy, but I just ran out of road and he got me by a few inches, so an 8th place for the day.
This is the entire race as seen from Rob Bell's handlebars. I'm pretty easy to spot with my yellow shoes.
The following day was the King of Moore criterium. I guess it went slightly better. I'll do that race report very soon.
I've been riding, racing and working in the bicycle industry for over 30 years. I'm a USAC category 1 road racer and daily bicycle commuter. I like tools, working on stuff, bicycles, hot rods, metal fabrication and welding. I also like making videos about the stuff I like to do and how I like to do stuff. If you're interested in any of the stuff I'm interested in, you might want to check out my youtube channel. I have a very cool wife and 2 awesome daughters.
