Snelling bo belling. The first road race of the season turned out to be a lot more interesting than orginally anticipated. My teammate and I started the morning with my inaugural breakfast food...bagel eggwitch! I came upon this creation about half way through the season last year and came to the conclusion that it was the ultimate power pre race breakfast. It contains all the main ingrediants, carbs and protien and is easy to get down, especially when those pre-race butterflies decide to show there ugly face.
The race started fairly uneventful. There was a lot of chatter at the start line, all the girls seemed to be happy to see each other after our nice little off-season, the mood was relaxed, people were mainly scanning the pack to see who had gone to which team and what were the new teams? Namely us and the black stallions of some of the Mcguire remenants.
The whistle blew and we were off on our promanade! The race consisted of 5 10+mile laps on rolling to flat country roads, the weather was perfect and the mood was fairly mellow. The first lap played out fairly uneventful. The second lap entailed a nicley accomplished break, in which I kept wondering why the hell I wasn't in it. It included pretty much one person from all the largest teams in the field, who perceded with their blocking to keep the rest of us out. I remember being towards the front of the pack and seeing the break about a 1/4 mile ahead and thinking to myself..."bridge the gap!....no, it's to early save your energy it will get brought back....bridge the gap! you ding bat! NO, No play it safe!"
On to lap 3...it starts to get a little more exciteing, the pace gets picked up by countless attacks by a webcor girl and another one who I know to be a very strong time trialer. They obviously want that break back as much as I do, but it's hard when your the minority. So after countless attacks and counter attacks...I begin to cramp....Oh yeah...there's that whole water issue. Your supposed to continuely drink water while racing, not just when you become completely parched and crampamified! DUH!! After pounding some fluid and getting spit out the back and manage to pull myself back, the break has disappeared into the distance and everyone in the pack has pretty much come to the reality that we were not going to get it back. So, I sit in try and regain some composer and strength to hopefully fight out the final sprint finish.
Lap 4....I hate lap 4! Again the mood was melancholy, people where pretty satisfied with finishing as a pack, except for one team who decided to make one last random attempt to drill the pace to, I think try and get the break back...Maybe they didn't realize it was over 2 minutes out. Anyways, I am sitting towards the back of the pack when all of a sudden I start to go horizontal...and the thought runs through my head " OH CRAP, THIS IS GOING TO HURT!" and it sure did! Wham! I am bouncing and sliding on the pavement. I come to a complete stop, proceed to jump up like someone lit a fire under my butt and do the head to toe body scan....Ok, hip really hurt and feels a little raw, abs are in spasm, don't recall hitting head..."GET OUT OF THE WAY!!! THE MEN"S 2 are coming!"...I think,"Did you not just happen to notice that I have just kissed the pavement?" but I run out off to the side. They go by and I look a head and there is our chase car and a palo alto girl with a flat as well, Rob the chase car driver says that he is low on wheels because there have been so many flats, I offer her my rear wheel, because on the way down I did touch hers, not sure if that's way she flatted, but shit I was in a lot of pain and not going to be a contender in the end, he fortunately finds one last one, sets her up, my front is flat, so he sets me up and then says he will chase us back on, but it's up to us to hang on. I get going and can not clip in for the life of me...I proceed to hang my head and meander my way back to the finish.
Once at the finish line, there is word going around that some local yolkel has dumbed tacs on the course and there have been dozens and dozens of flats. My concerned teammates and friends ask me what the heck happen and for the life of my I can not figure it out..only that all of a sudden I was headed down and my front tire was flat.
Finally we make it home and I take my bike to the bike shop to get it checked out and change the flat...To no real big surprise, sure enough, there is a nice tac size puncture right through the top of the tube....Darn those farm boys!!!! I would like to see how they feel when have the skin on their butt and hip gets rubbed off!
