Golden Haystack

Phew...
Whilst Kevin and folk were hitting up the mountains with some grueling rides, I was riding as hard as I possibly could for a few minutes--I think I need some big days this week...

Saturday
Chris and I rode our asses off at the Haystack Mountain individual time trial. It was a 16.8 mile loop just north of town. Winds were coming out of the Northwest at a steadily annoying 10-15 mph or so. The course began on hwy 36 near Neva Road and headed North, taking a right-hand turn onto Nelson Road, then a right onto 75th, right onto Niwot Road, and finally continuing onto Neva Road, finished at the top of a hill just before hwy 36.

Usually, I love riding hard on that exact loop (minus heading west on Neva), because it is one of very few roads around here that has rolling hills and typically has a tailwind. Usually, heading east on Nelson is like a fast roller coaster: bombing the descents, sprinting up the hills in the 53-11, and basically just hauling ass. Unfortunately on race day, the winds turned Nelson into a typically tough crosswind jaunt. Heading down 75th was pretty fast, but still tough. Then heading back on Niwot/Neva was an absolute nightmare. Actually, every minute of the damn thing was a nightmare, which is why I'm going to avoid time trials whenever possible.

Anyway, numbers schmumbers:
I finished 7th in the cat. 3s with a time of 37:47:30, avg. speed: 26.7 mph.

Chris beat 11 dudes in the cat 4 race! This is the same Chris that has ridden his bike like 10 times in the past month and a half. He finished with a time of 47:34:40, avg. speed: 21.3 mph.

And um, winning time of the pros, by Ben Day of Toyota-United, was 32:54:90, avg. speed: 30.6 mph. Damn. Don't tell him, but I put EPO into his soy latte when he came into Saxy's on Friday.

Sunday:
Tokyo Joe's criterium in Golden. Pretty standard crit. Not much to say other than it was fun to race with Ben Delaney from VeloNews and Dan Schuetz from the Horizon Organic team. I did my best to stay n 20-30 meters a swear the front, away from any crashes, of which there were a few. On the final lap I chased down a flier that I thought might take the win. As he began to run out of gas I could see the man field catching us, so I put in a big effort to take it to the finish. In the final 20-30 meters a swarm of dudes passed me. Darn. Gotta be more patient next time.



Big week of riding coming up and plenty of good weather!