It’s Saturday afternoon and stages 1 & 2 are in the books here. Yesterday was a 110 mile road race with a climb at about 30 miles to go. Nothing new to report. 3 guys got away and up to 11 minutes. Jelly Belly, Toyota and Healthnet put 2 riders each up front and they were caught 10 miles from the finish. About 3 km out, going about 40mph I got crossed up, overlapping a wheel, and high sided. Needless to say it didn’t turn out too good. My frame is in more than one piece. My body is still in one piece, minus a fair amount of skin. I hadn’t fallen hard on the road for three or four years. It was weird in the bathtub scrubbing out the abrasions wondering how I used to do it on a constant basis. It hurt like hell. Toyota finished 1,2.

This morning, after about 3 hours of sleep, we started at 8 am. It was a 95 mile road race on three circuits. Brian got off the front with a Tim Johnson from Healthnet, a Jelly Belly rider and a rider from Mexico. He rode 50 plus miles in that group and got caught 15 miles to go. Toyota only had to put 4 ridrs on the front most of the day, but eventually Priority Health added a couple to help out. I can’t figure out the tactics of Pro Teams nowadays. But, that’s not anything I can control. It eventually came down to a field sprint. Big open, downhill for the last 500 meters. I had good position, but with 300 meters or so to go, got cut off and finished somewhere between 10-20.

So, as usual, the weekend is going to come down to who can ride up a 2.5 mile uphill TT. And time bonuses. My start time is nearly 8 pm tonight. Seems alittle late, but I don’t mind. Like I said in the last post, it is boring, but predictable racing. Pretty negative. But, there was no secret there.

Joe Martin is over. It went pretty much as predicted. It was fine for me because I’m riding like hell, but this tempo style bike racing is boring. Healthnet put 9 guys on the front of the criterium for an hour and a half. I wonder if USAC thinks that is what spectators want to watch? A 9 man TTT in every criterium of every stage race in the US.

The criterium wasn’t easy though. The course is hard and technical enough that there is carnage at the back of the field even when it was steady at the front. There were less than 30 guys left at the end out of 130 starters. I moved up to 35 overall because of the attrition. $100 prize money. That works out to about .0001 cents for every brain cell I lost in the past 3 days. Pretty good value really.

Hopefully, during the next two weeks, things will turn around. I’ve been off antibiotics for almost a week now. And allergies usually subside somewhere around the first of June. My favorite races of the season are nearly here with Quad Cities Memorial Day Weekend, Tulsa Tough and then Nature Valley Gran Prix. I might go down to Austin for a one day/night Criterium in the first of June. That is always a good time.

In the mean time, the Giro and Floyd’s hearing should be interesting to follow at least.