P’ville
What can I say that hasn’t been said? Crashes. Flats. Dust, dirt, and ridiculous pollen count. Heat. Lost water bottles, dehydration, and cramping. This didn’t all happen to me, but most everyone dealt with some or most of these things during the race. When a race starts with 70+ and ends with 30 it is a tough day. For myself, the worst that happened was that the bottom tab of my bottle cage that holds the base of the bottle sheared off after hitting a pothole on the dirt section. Amazingly, the tenacious water bottle held on until I realized what had happened when reaching down to grab it for a swig. So no complaints from me on that front. We had 2 guys (and 1 woman) on our team crash. Ian and Amanda both went to the hospital to have their deep wounds taken care of. We had 1 flat and several more guys caught behind the “big” wreck on the 2nd lap that split the field. Fife went down on lap 3 going into the dirt, but dug deep to catch back on. A the end, Bike Doctor finished with 3 guys. Ouch.
The race wasn’t particularly aggressive, we just lost guys through attrition from the above factors. An attack at the end of lap 4 went up the road. Several us tried to bridge and got a gap. I hoped this was the moment when the field would finally crack. It wasn’t to be and it came back together. However, a young gun from Coppi stayed away and another rider jumped to bridge. That was the move. I didn’t recognize it at the time, unfortunately. I thought it would be chased down, but other than myself and several others, including 2 guys from Route 1 Velo, no one worked. As one of the guys from Route 1 put it, “I guess the pack is ok with racing for 3rd place”. And so it was. I can’t blame them. Well, yes I can, but racing is racing and some are willing to play what they’ve got left. Figuring I finished 18th, it means the 16 guys who blew by me with 200 meters to go played the better hand.
Hind sight being a wonderful thing, I should have tried getting away that last lap - even it it meant blowing up. But oh well. Another lesson learned. Seems like I am a bit slow, cause I’ve made this mistake of hoping people would help me late in the race to pull something back and wasted too much energy before.
I suppose I’m like an old dog, I still hang onto my mountain biker mentality of just riding hard and pushing tactics to the side. This works well in cyclocross too. Road racing…not so much.
Like George Hincapie and his classics campaigns, I have a love-hate relationship with Poolesville. I think she’s trying to break up with me.
Some great stories to read from the race - they are always both amusing and sad.
Daft Friday
Good news - NASA refunded my research for another year. They like me! They really do!
Let’s dance to that…
NASA brilliance
Intergalactic physics. Earth’s biogeochemical processes. Operational satellite missions. And of course, space travel. NASA does a lot of things and does them well. Some of the planet’s best and brightest work for or with NASA.
This week I have been networking, schmoozing, and bullshitting with many of NASA’s funded scientists in the Earth Observations Science (EOS) Division… i.e. lots of geeks.
However, spelling of names is not a skill NASA appears good at. My name badge and conference packet has my last name spelled as Elliott instead of ElliCott. Honest mistake that occurs quite often.
But, being an absent-minded scientist, I forgot my badge this morning and went to the registration desk to get a new one. The staff had me fill out my name and affiliation and printed a new one. What did I get?
Evan Elliott.
Greenbrier and beyond
2nd place Expert 30-39.
I had a surprisingly good race. I sort of over did things on Saturday…cleaning bikes, creeks (sweep the creek), the abode, and fixing bikes, sinks, etc. So my legs and back were shot come evening time. But I felt good come Sunday and early in the first lap I rode away from the pack with Michael Gallagher (C3-Sollay). I remember him from cyclocross season where he generally put the smack down on all-comers (with his teammate, Wes - although they weren’t teammates at the time). Near the end of the 2nd lap I took a detour into the woods after getting sideways through one of many deep bogs on the course. With that, Michael rode away. I didn’t see him again until the last technical climb on the last lap. I got within about 30 feet and used my Jedi Master skills to keep him from looking back and seeing me, but alas, the force was greater with him. He saw me and hit the afterburners. I tried the same but spun out climbing over the last log on the last steep section, forcing me to dismount and run. I think Michael hit me with some Jedi Voodoo mojo. That was the only time I screwed up a technical section during the race and was clearly bad timing. Still, I am very happy with my result and how I rode and felt. Next mtb races include the Hoo-Ha, Windham NMBS (maybe), and Mt Snow nationals. In case anyone really cared.
Today I rewarded my tired legs with punishing them on the Goon ride. Legs no-happy with me.
Time to look forward to some dirt of another sort at Poolesville road race this Saturday.
Nice shot of my mud treatment (from Jay Divinagracia)
IMBA
If you’re looking for a diversion from the BikeJam event over Memorial Day weekend may I suggest this…
Which will be one of many available rides at this…
IMBA Stokesville Memorial Day Weekend
Having participated in both the BikeJam (2007) and IMBA weekend (2006) I am putting my money back into the fat tire event. BikeJam is ok, but nothing treats you better on Memorial Day weekend than camping, riding, eating, and throwing back beers with 100+ like minded folks. Did I mention the riding is silly? 3-4-5-6 hour rides on some of the best single track in Virgina, East Coast, and dare I say US. I do.
Music
Robb turned me onto this site while we put back a gallon of beer on Saturday. Awesome place for just kicking back and letting a little AI do it’s thing. Just plug in a band you like, it plays a song from them, then starts to find similar music and learns what you like based on your input.
recap
too much stuff to go over in multiple postings so here is a recap:
Charlottesville - Kim and I went down to stay at a cool old B&B. She was off for Seattle on Monday (last week) for 2 weeks and I was heading to Boston. For the month of April we’ll see each other for about a total of 6 days - that sucks. So we decided to do a little getaway. C’ville is a nice town and we stayed in the historic part. Hit the South Street brewery, bought a growler, went back to the B&B for happy hour wine and cheese, then on to dinner at Bang (tapas) and more drinks. We got drunk. I got gelato at Splendora after and lost my camera. (Turns out a homeless guy tried to sell it back to them the next day.) All in all, tons of fun.
Boston - last week. Stayed with Josef, Sam, and Charlotte (their 1 year old daughter). Hit D&D, a mainstay in the northeast, multiple times. AAG conference was good. My work went over well and I made some potential contacts for collaboration. Josef and I stayed up each night talking shop and drinking beers until midnight.
Friday night - came home, road a silly fast pace with Braveheart and then went out for drinks with him after. We visited some Spaniards. The Spanish coalition (not sure exactly where everyone was from) was very welcoming and we ate some great salsa and chorizo, steak, and had wine and beer. The Scotsman and I then headed to RFD to drink more beer with his lazy teammates. A very nice time with folks I didn’t know, but were all very friendly.
Saturday - road the mountain bike at Greenbrier in prep for this Sunday’s race (AMBC and Maryland State Champs). Felt good. The weather was beautiful and the bike road like it had an engine. The thing climbs like a billy-goat.
Saturday evening was deck drinking (and eating) at the WROBs. Fife-dawg, Cliff-rock, Ben, Ian, and significant others, were in effect. I stayed late, drank too much beer and Jameson and ate too many sugary baked goods. Basically, it was good night.
Carl Dolan - Sunday, and the weather had turned suddenly angry. Did I say something? It poured for about 30 minutes before go time and didn’t look very good for us unpaid, overrated (in our minds) amateur cat 3 and 4s. The skies forgave us and parted for racing. The race was active with multiple teams showing big squads. This is cool because it means things should take on, at least in appearance, some semblence of team racing. Some Artemis guys were still chasing down breaks even though they had teammates in them, but most teams had their shit together. Route 1 Velo was getting road side instructions from the now upgraded (to cat 2) Mike Esmonde. Unfortunately, with 5 laps to go there was a bad crash. I later found out that teammate Mike Schneider, among others, was involved (A/C joint separation I think). They stopped the race for about 30 minutes and we all RODE around in small circles. It gave teams with foresight, which was most, time to discuss and plan their strategy. Ours worked - we killed it over the last few laps and had a great leadout train going. I punched it with 1 to go and when I pulled off and saw the front of the pack going through the final turn I was grinning ear-to-ear. We had 5 guys (Fife, Cliff, Ian, Todd, and Robb) up front drilling it with Josh in tow. Josh took the W by at least 2 bike lengths - check it out here in Kyle’s video (near the bottom, if you wait (a long time) to the end of the video you’ll see about 4 Bike Doctor guys (pimping new team kits in black and one shoots his fist in the air when he hears we won. I think that was Fife or Ian). So the plan worked, which is rare in racing. Especially cat 3 racing. It felt good - like each one of us had won.
Monday - easy day with some beer in the evening. Catch up on work, do some writing to get this new research published. Cook, eat, drink, sleep.
Today - “race winning intervals” (see Hunter Allen) in the early light before work. Felt like crap. Maybe I need to drink a few beers before. Worked on number crunching and writing and the weather actually got nice again. Good thing because my carpentry skills suck and the Arc I was building was barely pond, let alone sea, worthy. Decided to punish myself for weak RWIs this morning by jumping in the Goon ride this evening. It can be hectic, but the pace is always blistering and I usually walk away feeling both worked over and at the same time satisfied. Back home - drank 2 beers (maybe I’ll have another) to recover.
