April | 2015 | Steve Tilford

Saturday was US National Criterium Championships. Actually it was US Professional Criterium Championships and also Criterium Nationals for women. The Elite Criterium Nationals aren’t until later in the summer.

I had no idea that this was going on this weekend. I’m not sure who is to blame at the Global Cycling Headquarters in Colorado Springs, USAC, but having criterium Nationals as a stand alone event, in April, is just plain stupid. Like I posted a last week, here in the US, we’ve done everything in our abilities to showcase criterium racing as close to second tier as we can. And this just is part of that whole problem.

Last year they allowed elite riders to compete the Professional Championships because less than 20 Professional guys showed up. This year, it was only “Professionals” and 39 riders managed to make their way to Greenville to ride around in front of pretty much no one. There were over 50 woman racing, which is makes an usual ratio, as compared to a normal race weekend.

Anyway, the Big Blue Train, which is how the UnitedHealthcare team, had a pretty horrible weekend. For both men’s and women’s events. They were the team to beat in both races and that is just what happened, they were beat.

The women’s race was under complete control. They had 7 riders left in a field of around 25 and it looked to be business as usual. The problem was that in the final corner, the leadout girl for UHC fell, taking out defending National Champion, and UHC team mate, Coryn Rivera. This pile of women allowed Kendall Ryan (Tibco-SVB), who had to make a little squiggle move to avoid the mess, to ride allow to the line and win alone. It looked like Coryn had set up the end perfectly and that he was just super unlucky. But that is bike racing.

The men’s race was screwy. About 1/2 way through the field split in a group of 14, then 17 riders, with no one in the split really wanting to ride off the front. The front group split a bunch of times, but never the right combination. I’m not sure what the right combination would have been.

Finally the UHC guys just went to the front and tried to control the race. Optum and Hincapie both put in some digs to soften the UHC team up some. I don’t know, maybe it worked. Because the end was unexpected.

With a lap to go, it was business as usual for UHC, all four riders in line at the front. But, they obviously weren’t going fast enough, because heading to up the last corner, Eric Marcotte jumped and that was all she wrote.

I know wouldn’t want Eric Marcotte 3 bike lengths behind me in that situation, with enough room to get a good head of stream going, so close to the finish. He is so fast and isn’t going to slow down. Hincapie’s Ty Magner, saw Eric go, but couldn’t get up to speed to get on him.

The two UHC sprinters, John Murphy and Luke Keough, were caught by surprise and barely managed to get onto Magner who had already lost Eric.

So, Eric won by himself, and Ty Magner was 2nd, leaving the last podium spot of Luke Keough, which wasn’t what UHC was looking for.

Eric Marcotte made a super move and was rewarded for his efforts. So, he is the current US Professional Road and Criterium Champion for the next month and a half, at least. I’m not sure anyone else I has done that. Pretty sure not. Pretty stellar.

You can skip to 1:48 to watch the end of the women’s race and to approx. 4;11 to watch the last couple laps of the men’s race.

As a bike racer, I’ve always had to fix things. Back in the day, we used to completely disassemble, clean, and reassemble our bikes before each race. It was like having a little pre-race party every Friday night before the race. I remember having chain issues at a junior State Championships and realized, right before the race, that I put my rear derailleur cage, on my Campy derailleur, back together wrong.

Anyway, then it progressed to automobiles. My first car was a Volkswagen pickup truck. The engine blew soon after I got it. My brother and I took the engine down the basement and completely rebuilt it. The engine is really simple, but it took the idiots manual to get it back together again. We bought a simple set of tools at Sears and a torque wrench. Soon, my favorite tools were metric open ends, 10 and 13.

After that, it was home repair. Changing the electrical sockets for grounding to roofing my house. The first time you do something, it is sort of intimidating, but after, it usually seems pretty simple.

The Internet is a wonderful resource for fix-it-yourself types. You can nearly always find someone that has had you exact problem and most of the time has posted something about it. It is great when there is a video, especially in auto repair, but forums etc., usually have something about nearly any issue you might have.

Now I fix things usually because of either convenience or because of incompetence. Not my incompetence, but because of other peoples. Plus, you can fix something yourself for a fraction of the cost of paying someone else. Sometimes it costs nothing to fix something that someone might charge you 100’s, if not 1000’s of dollars to repair yourself.

I will very, very rarely let someone else work on my car. Over history, my experience with auto repair is that most auto mechanics are incompetent. I usually get my car back worse than when I dropped it off. But there are somethings on a car I can’t do myself. Front end alignment and stuff like that I have to have someone else do. But nearly everything else, I do myself.

A few days ago, at the 100 mile Gravelluers Raid race, the drivers side automatic window quit working. Actually, it just broke. I’m not big on automatic doors, windows, etc. on cars. Just more stuff to go wrong. Anyway, Trudi said she heard a snap and then the window wouldn’t go up.

I took some Gorilla tape and taped the window up and drove home. I started the project last week. I realize that there are lots of different ways an automatic window works. In a Town and Country, or Caravan, it is with a weird window regulator, that looks like it shouldn’t fit in the door. I went to Youtube and watched a video about replacing it.

I ordered a new regulator from Amazon. It was $95 at O’reilleys and $50 at Amazon, plus $3.99 next day shipping. I’m sort of ying/yang about this on-line vs. local shopping. There really isn’t a local autoparts store. It’s all national chains. I really can’t understand why I can buy something at Amazon for pretty much half the price of a National chain store. Guess it must be overhead, employees etc.

Anyway, I wouldn’t say the replacement of the window regulator is for a weekend repair person. It is probably one level above that. Snapping the trim on and off newer automobiles always is a challenge. Not breaking those plastic snaps is nearly impossible. You needed torx bits and some other tools a normal person might not have. The project went fine and worked out great.

There is a certain amount of self satisfaction you get from repairing something yourself. Plus, it usually doesn’t take any more effort that arranging to get it repaired by someone else. The hassle of dropping you car off and picking it up takes an hour on both ends. By that time, I had the window repaired.

But, I do have way too many projects queue up. So many that it is a little overwhelming. Sometimes it is a little hard to prioritize. But, that is just life. We prioritize things in our lives lots of ways. Sometimes consciously, and many time unconsciously. We just cope as best we can.