| Godspeed You! Black Emperor - East Hastings .mp3 | ||
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Tuesday I did Coffee Crew plus 2 more hours with Kyle, Ashley and James Yang. It ended up being about 70 miles, but I didn't even realize that until later. Not that it was a problem, I was just surprised.
Lately the wind has been hectic around here. it always seems to be hitting you in the face, no matter which way you look. I don't mind wind so much when I am racing because I feel pretty good in it, but there is nothing that will sap your legs faster on a training ride than wind.
I was going to do the secret coffee crew today through the canyon, but 5 AM didn't agree with me today, so I rolled over and tried again; I didn't roll out of the house until after noon. I rode out to Fashion Island and met up with Ashley for an hour (an hour which fucking FLEW by, he's good people) and then we both headed home. Only about 45 miles today, I decided to keep it light because tomorrow will end up being about 70 miles again when I include the Great Park race in Irvine in the late hours of the day.
I haven't done this race yet, so I am pretty excited about it. I am also worried because it has been drawing a pretty talented field and I will be a REALLY small fish in a REALLY big pond. That doesn't mean I won't try and win, just means I have an excuse already for my next post :)
Ashley put the thought in my head about doing Superweek (well he didn't even intend too, he was just talking about going himself) and now I am pretty close to making the decision to head out there. It will mean I will be requesting my upgrade much sooner, like after Long Beach Grand Prix, but Wes is on a recovery month and Sean is already set to upgrade so it'll be alright I think. The chance to race up to 5 or 6 times in just over a week long trip is too good to miss.
This past Sunday I did the San Luis Rey Road Race. It was advertised as being a much friendlier course for my body type, so I was pretty excited about it. Turns out it is a perfect course for me, I just need to train on some climbs once in a while. Here is my race report I submitted to my team:
Mark Reynolds San Luis Rey Road Race
4 laps of a moderately hilly 14.7 miles circuit on well paved roads.
Wes, myself, and one of Wes’ friends Derek embarked on this course together. I surprisingly felt no effects from my crash while on the bike so I was pretty excited to try my hand at another road race. I felt like I had dead legs again before the race, but we put in pretty hard warm up which I think helped wake them up. I was feeling pretty good, and so was Wes, we were both in the front 5 for the first lap.
This course is actually really fun to race, I can’t wait to focus more on my climbing next year to try my hand again. The course is an out and back with 2 180 turns on either ends of the snake. Once we made the turn to come back towards the climb I made sure I was on the outside to be active if I something caught my fancy. one lone guy attacked pretty quickly after the turn and I jumped to join him (hoping maybe 1 or 2 more would join us, but no one did). We actually managed to get out of site of the peleton and get a nice gap. He had the Orange guys and I had Wes and his friend Derek to disrupt things while we tried to build a lead. Everything was going well and it looked like we would reach the base of the climb alone, which was my goal. I figured if we could get on the hill maybe I could find something inside to help me make it up the climb and then we would have a whole bunch of downhill to recover (the peleton went very slowly on the downhill as a group because of two pretty tight left hand turns. Just before we reached the base the catch was made, but I was able to tuck in with the front of the pack.
I thought, “this is great I attacked with one other rider for about 5 miles and I’m still fresh enough to follow the leaders up the climb.” Well there are 2 parts to the climb, the part I like which was faaaaast and the part I didn’t like which was steep. Luckily I had Wes there to pace me up so I didn’t lose too much ground as I got dropped on the climb. I guess I burned more candles than I thought. I TTed solo back to the pack for about 3 miles and finally caught on and Wes let me tuck in next to him out of the wind. There we rested. The second lap was pretty uneventful as we reached the climb together. This time Wes wasn’t feeling so well so I waited for him to make sure we both got back on. He recovers fairly quickly, so I knew we would have a good shot and getting back to the peleton. We caught onto a group of 3 riders and quickly forced them to paceline, this one SC Velo guy made some amazing pulls. And we were safe and sound again. This lap was exactly like lap 2 except for some reason the entire race stopped dead because of a palm from in the shoulder, where no one was even racing. I think Wes touched wheels with someone and almost went down. I leaned into the guy and stayed but, the people behind him were not so lucky.
This made the peleton realize we had been going entirely too slowly and they took the climb very aggressively. Wes and I both hung on for as long as we could, but we were dropped again, this time with even more work to do. As we descended we caught 2 riders and quickly passed them, but they sucked our wheel pretty badly, so we made it evident that it was their turn to pull. Things were said and Wes looked at me and we nonverbally decided to teach them a lesson. We promptly dropped them and I think we saw them roll in about 15 mins after us. We never did catch on the main group on that last lap, but we were too close not to keep going full out. Fuck Wes is strong. We would catch a group of riders try to get them to paceline with us and then destroy them. Obviously we were gapped out because we can’t climb not because we were tired. well I did get REALLY tired on the last time up the climb. Wes tried keep me with him, but at this point there was no point for him to go slow if he could catch a few guys just because I was toast, our day was almost done. I really worked on eating during this race, but I still could have eaten more I think. I showed on the last climb.
All in all I was pretty happy with how we raced, I mean it sucks to not be with the main group, but both of us have not been working on our climbing admittedly. Looking forward to having a few guys to work with next weekend in Long Beach.
Thanks for all of our help Wes.
That's all I got for today, Its time for bed I am getting up early for coffee crew. I should mention that my wounds fro my crash are healing quite well, so I should make it!
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