Dan Action

A long weekend, a week off. November 11, 2007

    Well, where do I start?  Last weekend was a back-to-back UCI weekend, one race in Farmington, CT, one race in Northhampton, MA.  My mom lives in Farmington and she and my step-dad opened up their house to Hannah and myself, but also to a slew of friends from the one and only Cambridge Bicycle team.  I will say: it was really nice to travel en masse with a bunch of goofballs not too unlike myself.  It took the edge off a lot and made the weekend seem more fun.

Saturday’s race was cold, windy, and was threatening rain, which finally did start coming down during the elite women’s race, making for some dicey cornering. I was feeling pretty good throughout the day approaching my race. Having my mom’s house so close made things really great since I was able to ride to the course at my own leisure. I ate well, warmed up on the ride to the course, and was just taking things at my own pace, which I hate to say, is a rarity for me at these weekends out.

Racing was, in a word, lackluster.  I was last row at the start since I registered day-of, due to a crashed server or something at BikeReg on the previous Wednesday.  Ho-hum. I got off to a start some would say was “not too shabby”, got caught up in some melee in the first sand section,  and then after a couple of laps in and the race was strung out a bit, I stacked it up on the concrete while cornering. The rain had made all the road sections pretty slick (duh.) and I thought I was taking the turn gingerly enough, but “POW”; I was on the ground.  The first thing I thought was “Holy shit that is cold!”, the second thing I thought was “Holy shit that hurts!”.  I went down straight onto my left shoulder.  Then subsequent thoughts that popped into my brain were more to the tune of the rider behind me T-boning or not, and how many spots I was losing in the race.  I got up and finished, but I was really hurting.  At least i didn’t come in last, and I am glad I finished.  I even got some of those $1 primes from the funny folks from Ghostship Clothing, Thanks!

“Northhampton?” you ask?  Woof.  Let’s just say I was hurting from the crash the da before.  The best things about that race was trading pulls with Pete Rubijono from Cambridge Bicycles, wearing the new team skinsuits my mom and I made the night before and the day of, and hanging out having a beer in town after the race. It was one of those races that you take off from before results are posted.   I still love the course there. I think it is my favorite of the New England calendar.  See, no hard feelings.

Presently, I am taking this weekend off of racing and spending it in Gainesville, Fl. catching up on some lost time with a special someone.  It feels super good.  I played a show, ran, rode a lot, it is what I needed, rest from everything that is not a bike.  Today I caught the weekend group ride and since te only bike I have down here is m track bike, rode that with them for a pretty quickly paced 85 miles.  Ouch. My quads were definitely cramping towards the end. Tomorrow I go about putting things in order for my move down here in December.  Thanks, everybody.