Hey y'all! It's been a couple of months since my last post. I've been meaning to finish up part 3 of my foray back into blogging but school and life happened and I haven't had a ton of spare time. I'll try my best to get to work on it and get it our for all of you after NorthStar.
The season has been underway for a couple of months now and it couldn't be going much better! I'm spending a majority of this season racing with Borah Factory Racing and it has been a blast! Ripping up the Tuesday Night Worlds scene has been great fun and I couldn't ask for a better group of dudes to race with!
Spring semester wrapped up at the University of Minnesota in the beginning of May. I also take classes during the summer so I have about 4 weeks to work, play bike racer, and chill. The first 2 weeks of my vacation were spent just riding and racing.
Luckily I was out of school for the first Thursday Night Lights up at the track. I had not raced up at the track since 2014 and I was eager to go out and turn left real fast. That night at the track was an absolute blast! There just isn't another feeling in cycling like dropping down the banking and launching an attack during a hard track race. I'm really looking forward to racing as many track nights as I can, especially partaking in a few madisons with my teammate Brandon Krawczyk.
The week after racing up at the track Jim (my dad, yes I call my parents by their first names, but so does Bart Simpson) and I headed down to Charlotte, North Carolina for the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600. I started watching NASCAR around this time last year and I've been hooked since! It may be a bit on the low-brow end of the spectrum, but we all need a bit of low-brow in our lives! While we were down there I put in few longer training rides in and a couple of high intensity workouts. The riding there was quite scenic, my only gripe was the lack of a shoulder on many roads.
After we flew back from Charlotte I was home for two days before heading down to Austin, Texas. During this trip I am guest riding with ELBOWZ Racing p/b Synergy.O. I will be racing the OKC Pro-Am, Tulsa Tough, and the NorthStar GP with the team. I'm stoked to be given this opportunity to spend a few weeks racing at a high level with the team.
The OKC Pro-Am was this past weekend. Consisting of a twilight crit on Friday, followed by two standard crits on Saturday and Sunday. I was a bit anxious about this weekend of racing because I had not raced a Cat 1 crit since my days with Hagens-Berman in 2014. I went into the weekend hoping for the best and that I would be able to help out the other ELBOWZ.
We drove up on to Oklahoma City on Friday morning and dropped our stuff off at our host house before heading to the race. Friday's course was pretty simple, four right-hand turns and a bit of elevation change. Pretty simple right? Well, to keep it exciting we were racing at 9 PM with minimal lighting on the course. Stuff like that can be a bit annoying, but at the end of the day taking a step back its things like poor lighting during a night crit that contribute to the hilarity that I love about elite domestic bike racing.
The race itself was pretty fun. I was able to cover a few moves and have a great time. I wasn't able to contribute to a team effort as much as I'd have liked to, but baby steps are better than no steps I suppose. One of my temporary teammates, Kevin Girkins was solo in the closing laps until half a lap to go, while another, Tony Baca was able to sprint it our for fourth. Another ELBOWZ rider, Stefan Rothe was able to nab a prime near the end of the race. All-in-all it was a fun night and nice great way to re-introduce myself to crit racing.
Saturday's race was a simple figure 8 course close to the previous day's race. It would have been a fun day of racing but, as luck would have it, a torrential down pour struck the race right as we were lining up to start. This caused me to lose my nerve quite a bit as I have never raced crits with much courage in the rain. As it turns out, three-fourths of the field had the same feeling as a majority of us pulled out after only riding a handful of laps. This was a bit of a bummer for me because I have always been a fan of flat, figure 8 courses. On the bright side, getting back to the host house early allowed me to do some much needed laundry and do some reading. It's the little things in life, right? Tony and Kevin were able to get in the prize money with 8th and 9th place and funny enough, my former roommate from California, Eamon Lucas, won the race.
The final day was a 6 corner, L-shaped course with a couple of rises thrown in. The race didn't go great for me unfortunately. I felt quite flat from the gun and I just couldn't find a nice rhythm that I usually can during a crit. I sat near the back of the field for a majority of the race until pulling myself with 6 laps to go. This was pretty frustrating for two reasons. First and foremost, I was bummed that I was unable to help out my teammates as much as I'd like to. The second was that the race was never "Oh man we're really flying!" difficult, which made dropping out feel even more lame.
Luckily, I'll be spending the week in between the OKC Pro-Am and Tulsa Tough getting some nice riding done in the Austin area while I stay with another ELBOWZ rider, Justin Stanley. Huge shout out to him for hosting me and showing me the best routes around town!
I'll be heading out to Tulsa on Friday morning and I'm hopeful that it'll be a more successful weekend of racing from a personal standpoint. However, even if the racing doesn't go 100% perfect I'll still be stoked to have been given the opportunity to race with ELBOWZ for these past few weeks! Look out for my next update after the NorthStar GP. Also, if you happen to be at the races feel free to come up and chat!
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