DH on the lowdown

Gate City Grind '06 - red bull powered dope free fun

Lots of big news has been coming out of France over the weekend. The big news outta Pocatello, Idaho, is that T-bird and J-Lao made their way to put the smack down on all of us in the Gate City Grind. New for the Grind this year was the Prologue. The best descriptive of this 70% hillclimb, 30% high-speed turning course is arm-numbing, cross-eyed, nausea inducing fun. By the time you were most of the way up the 70% you realized how bad you were hurting thinking that you still had quite a way to go. A 35+ rider suggested that as soon as you start hurting, go one gear harder because you’re almost done. I did that as the climb started to level out and as I approached the final 30% of the course I realized my arms were going numb from a huge lack of oxygen. The Claw threw down so hard that upon returning to his vehicle he threw up. Another classic move brought to you by The Claw to push himself so far over the limit.

In 4 years of racing the Grind this road race had to be the best. Still a little flat from the rest week, I was rolling on full will power knowing that we had to close time to the leaders on the road the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th laps thanks to monster throw-downs from T-bird, J-Lao, and a super tough Boise racer. T-bird hung on for the victory with what was left of the pack charging hard. We came close, but not close enough. In a strange and sick way, it’s fun to have our hometown pros show up for local racing when they aren’t on the road. They can single-handedly rip all of our legs off and show us how it’s done and it’s double the fun when they both are going full-gas. I hope they’ll at least say they had to go full-gas to do what they did Saturday. Every once in a while you can think straight enough to remember the lessons they dish out on the road and hopefully be able to apply them to your advantage when they don’t show up.

The TT that evening was alright, but I really didn’t feel super. My time wasn’t horrible, but there was a big gap to 4^th place. Apparently J-Lao set a course record, and the switch-up on course direction was said to be more difficult.

It was now time to figure out a way to have a great result in the criterium. AJ immediately was attempting to formulate a plan. Sunday morning, while J-vanator and little-Hejsdal were building farm town in AJ’s room, we discussed our options. We both knew that T-bird and J-Lao were on, ready to destroy the 1km crit course. It was also going to be super hot. AJ said he planned on doing what it would take to get me to the line for the victory. I had no idea he meant that he would get up the road for pretty much two-thirds of the race driving the break with 2 other guys. At one point they had a 50 second lead and were only trailing the group by 30 seconds.

That’s when the alarm bells went off and J-Lao went to the front with a 3 or 4 lap monster chase, bringing AJ and his companions back to within 15 seconds or so. I knew AJ would keep on drilling it as long as he could and he never really backed off until the chase was finished. His effort had let me just follow wheels and save some energy. There were a number of attacks and counters and I had to tell AJ to back off and let the others do the chasing. He was on fire. Soon a 4-man break was clear.

It was now do-or-die time and I remembered how #1 races criteriums. If there was a move up the road and it was time to go, he would throw down the power and get himself there. I knew it would hurt, but AJ had made the first part of the race easy for me and so I “laid down the heat” and gave it everything to get across. I made it pretty quick and to my surprise, solo. At that point I assessed the group and realized that 1^st, 3^rd and 4^th on GC were there along with Hagemonster. Since I more than likely wouldn’t be able to move up, I was really hoping that we wouldn’t get caught. J-Lao was back in the pack and soon to be joining us.

I’m not sure how long it took, but soon J-Lao was hammering across solo from the pack and making ground up fast on our break. His 2^nd place GC spot was in danger and he was burning up the road. T-bird was sitting comfortably at the back of our group with no worries and I was hoping that my gamble of letting the fight for 2^nd place would get me to 250m to go before J-Lao caught us or before T-bird got fed up with the cat-and-mouse-who’s-going-to-keep-this-break-rolling. Fortunately we made it to 250m before the other events came to pass.

The weekend of racing was epic at my standards and it sure was nice to drink a celebratory crit victory beer last night. Again, great teamwork made the victory possible, and there were only two of us there. We’ve had some excellent races as a team this year. Not all of them have resulted with a mark in the victory column but we’ve realized that we can make some big things happen. Big props to Team Porcupine/Specialized and big props to AJ for making it happen at the Holt Arena Criterium. Make sure that next year you all make it up for Gate City. Hopefully T-bird and J-Lao will be in town.