This post was started way back one June 26th..so have some catchin up to do.
Last Friday ( June19th) boogied out to Denver for a XTERRA in Baily Colorado. Stayed with my Buddy David C and his Family Friday night. (thanks guys) Good to catch up, hadn't stayed with David since the early 90's. He's got a Gymnastics school out there and doing quite well. He also set me up with an old Trek road frame in my size he had found somewhere at a bargain price...gonna have to single speed it out. Done, Check, Cech.
Anyway got up @ 5:00am Saturday morning and headed up into the Mountains...Actually Wellington Lake, SW of Denver 40 miles or so? 8000 feet. The XTERRA was called Buffalo Creek, it was a 1 mi swim, 20 mile MTB and 5 mile trail run. Water Temp...62 degrees. Hind sight being was it is...I should have gotten into the water during warm up to try and get used to the temp. But I thought, how can I get warmed up then have to get out and stand around and freeze? At the start, I freaked out on the cold temp. Talk about hyperventilating. Thought I was going to have to pull the plug, but found a kayak to hang onto for 3-4 minutes @ about the 1/4 mile mark to get my breath back. Got the groove going after that...Not the slowest swim time, but pretty slow. The MTB section was sweet...Wished it was longer and little more technical to bring back some of the leaders, but was sweet to get in some single track in the mountains. This was a pretty big event...they are touting it as possibly the biggest XTERRA in the World? I guess time will tell this year. 550 entrants between the Full XTERRA and a Short course.
I finished the run just as it was starting to spit rain, and was a constant drizzle 1/2 hr later. Typical Colorado. Didn't stick around for awards...I finished pretty far down. The dream of qualifying for Nationals in Utah is slip, slip, slipping away. May have to hit another race now other than the B.O.L.T. race - Branched Oak XTERRA to see if I can get some points back. One thing that seems a bit unfair is to have XTERRA grouped w/ Nebraska with the Mountain region regarding points. Not exactly the same playing field coming from 1120 feet to 5000+ feet. I suppose geographically if you look at where the races are in the midwest vs Mountain region, Nebraska is closer to the handful of races in Colorado than those in Arkansas. Me thinks promoters from Iowa, SD, KS, MO should get on board and promote some XTERRA races. Lake Manawa in CB IA might work.
After the XTERRA weekend went to Kansas City for the first weekend of the 2 weekend Tour of KC..if one is good...how about two? I missed the first night, kids had a swim meet Saturday morning on June 27th, so TK and I loaded up with kids after the meet and went down for the Lee's Summit Criterium. We were chased by a cold front the whole way down and as we were lining up the clouds were gathering overhead. I saw Tilford warming up and he was "I hope it rains."
I wasn't so into it. Sure enough 10 laps in it started sprinkling pretty good, by 14 laps the course was wet...by the third corner of the 14th lap, I was down. Hit a strip of tar that was wet and front wheel washed out. Pretty sore shoulder and wrist from that one...that and getting t-boned by Walters behind me. DNF Happy Birthday to me...45 now.
The next day was downtown. We had a plan to get out of KC and back home early so the crew lined up for the masters race. We had a decent sized field on the start line. Very cool course in Downtown with some good up and down. Really fun. Noah and Abigail raced the Jr race. Noah in particular was super stoked on the course. He must have done 10 laps warming up and went on to win his age group with Abigail getting 6th place. TP, TK and I did good in the Masters race. TP getting 2nd, me 4th, and Troy having a good time getting his crit legs back after all the gravel road riding he'd been doing.
The following weekend was home - July 4th weekend. Needed break...got some long road miles, blew up some fireworks.
That brings us to the Omaha cycling weekend - last weekend. Whew. My legs were bad bad bad. I couldn't go on the Papillion Crit course at all. Coupled by the fact I got behind a fair number or riders that had difficulty holding a wheel through some of the tricky corners up there. That was insult to injury, because my legs could not recover every time we had to catch the field after the rider in front of me created a bike and half length in front of us. Frustrating. Not too proud I ended up sitting on the lead break away of Priebe and Smith after they lapped me the second time and got towed around to the finish. They were very smooth. (take note guys.) - that's how you make a break away work.
The next day, same deal. Bad legs couldn't go at all, didn't want to fight on the yellow line cross wind so said screw it on the 4th lap...Then changed my mind and chased the rest of the race at the same distance to the group with Joe Savoie for basically the next 20 miles. I caught Joe up the one hill climb...he would pull like a mad man on the rest of the course, then the climb would come and he'd have a hard time. It was like the Sisyphean task...roll roll roll around the course, then hit the hill and the boulder rolls back down the hill - Start all over. Maybe it was good for me who knows. Finished dead last.
The fall out from the Omaha races...loss of individual Masters races and how it was kind of a convoluted award system for the Omaha weekend. I have to admit I am one of the people pushing for the removal of Masters races. Having done the upgrades now for the last few years, I've had access to the ridership numbers in Nebraska. 76% of the road riders in Nebraska are over the age of 30. When the percentage is that big...does it make sense to have special masters races?
The idea this year was to increase the field sizes in the Open races...increasing the payouts in the open classes, saving a bit of time on the course, and for the officials by not having a bunch of individual races all day long. The Nebraska Cycling Association (NCA) is attempting to still reward the Masters age riders for racing their category and finishing races. The people complaining are complaining about not supporting our increased age demographics...Huh? I thought categorization was based on ability and results - NOT AGE. That's why USA cycling has predetermined race categories Pro- 1-2-3-4-5.
Plus guys, last year we only had 138 licensed riders...we're not like KS or MO or IA or just about any state that can support full fields in both open races and Masters fields. I'm sorry...but it just looks plain silly when we line up for a race and only 10 guys are racing the open race and 10 guys are racing the masters race. Racing is about pack racing...not time trialing...unless of course you are time trialing. Again...master races were invented as a way to divert riders from FULL open race fields. We don't have that problem.
Let the frenzy begin...
Last Friday ( June19th) boogied out to Denver for a XTERRA in Baily Colorado. Stayed with my Buddy David C and his Family Friday night. (thanks guys) Good to catch up, hadn't stayed with David since the early 90's. He's got a Gymnastics school out there and doing quite well. He also set me up with an old Trek road frame in my size he had found somewhere at a bargain price...gonna have to single speed it out. Done, Check, Cech.
Anyway got up @ 5:00am Saturday morning and headed up into the Mountains...Actually Wellington Lake, SW of Denver 40 miles or so? 8000 feet. The XTERRA was called Buffalo Creek, it was a 1 mi swim, 20 mile MTB and 5 mile trail run. Water Temp...62 degrees. Hind sight being was it is...I should have gotten into the water during warm up to try and get used to the temp. But I thought, how can I get warmed up then have to get out and stand around and freeze? At the start, I freaked out on the cold temp. Talk about hyperventilating. Thought I was going to have to pull the plug, but found a kayak to hang onto for 3-4 minutes @ about the 1/4 mile mark to get my breath back. Got the groove going after that...Not the slowest swim time, but pretty slow. The MTB section was sweet...Wished it was longer and little more technical to bring back some of the leaders, but was sweet to get in some single track in the mountains. This was a pretty big event...they are touting it as possibly the biggest XTERRA in the World? I guess time will tell this year. 550 entrants between the Full XTERRA and a Short course.
I finished the run just as it was starting to spit rain, and was a constant drizzle 1/2 hr later. Typical Colorado. Didn't stick around for awards...I finished pretty far down. The dream of qualifying for Nationals in Utah is slip, slip, slipping away. May have to hit another race now other than the B.O.L.T. race - Branched Oak XTERRA to see if I can get some points back. One thing that seems a bit unfair is to have XTERRA grouped w/ Nebraska with the Mountain region regarding points. Not exactly the same playing field coming from 1120 feet to 5000+ feet. I suppose geographically if you look at where the races are in the midwest vs Mountain region, Nebraska is closer to the handful of races in Colorado than those in Arkansas. Me thinks promoters from Iowa, SD, KS, MO should get on board and promote some XTERRA races. Lake Manawa in CB IA might work.
After the XTERRA weekend went to Kansas City for the first weekend of the 2 weekend Tour of KC..if one is good...how about two? I missed the first night, kids had a swim meet Saturday morning on June 27th, so TK and I loaded up with kids after the meet and went down for the Lee's Summit Criterium. We were chased by a cold front the whole way down and as we were lining up the clouds were gathering overhead. I saw Tilford warming up and he was "I hope it rains."
I wasn't so into it. Sure enough 10 laps in it started sprinkling pretty good, by 14 laps the course was wet...by the third corner of the 14th lap, I was down. Hit a strip of tar that was wet and front wheel washed out. Pretty sore shoulder and wrist from that one...that and getting t-boned by Walters behind me. DNF Happy Birthday to me...45 now.
The next day was downtown. We had a plan to get out of KC and back home early so the crew lined up for the masters race. We had a decent sized field on the start line. Very cool course in Downtown with some good up and down. Really fun. Noah and Abigail raced the Jr race. Noah in particular was super stoked on the course. He must have done 10 laps warming up and went on to win his age group with Abigail getting 6th place. TP, TK and I did good in the Masters race. TP getting 2nd, me 4th, and Troy having a good time getting his crit legs back after all the gravel road riding he'd been doing.
The following weekend was home - July 4th weekend. Needed break...got some long road miles, blew up some fireworks.
That brings us to the Omaha cycling weekend - last weekend. Whew. My legs were bad bad bad. I couldn't go on the Papillion Crit course at all. Coupled by the fact I got behind a fair number or riders that had difficulty holding a wheel through some of the tricky corners up there. That was insult to injury, because my legs could not recover every time we had to catch the field after the rider in front of me created a bike and half length in front of us. Frustrating. Not too proud I ended up sitting on the lead break away of Priebe and Smith after they lapped me the second time and got towed around to the finish. They were very smooth. (take note guys.) - that's how you make a break away work.
The next day, same deal. Bad legs couldn't go at all, didn't want to fight on the yellow line cross wind so said screw it on the 4th lap...Then changed my mind and chased the rest of the race at the same distance to the group with Joe Savoie for basically the next 20 miles. I caught Joe up the one hill climb...he would pull like a mad man on the rest of the course, then the climb would come and he'd have a hard time. It was like the Sisyphean task...roll roll roll around the course, then hit the hill and the boulder rolls back down the hill - Start all over. Maybe it was good for me who knows. Finished dead last.
The fall out from the Omaha races...loss of individual Masters races and how it was kind of a convoluted award system for the Omaha weekend. I have to admit I am one of the people pushing for the removal of Masters races. Having done the upgrades now for the last few years, I've had access to the ridership numbers in Nebraska. 76% of the road riders in Nebraska are over the age of 30. When the percentage is that big...does it make sense to have special masters races?
The idea this year was to increase the field sizes in the Open races...increasing the payouts in the open classes, saving a bit of time on the course, and for the officials by not having a bunch of individual races all day long. The Nebraska Cycling Association (NCA) is attempting to still reward the Masters age riders for racing their category and finishing races. The people complaining are complaining about not supporting our increased age demographics...Huh? I thought categorization was based on ability and results - NOT AGE. That's why USA cycling has predetermined race categories Pro- 1-2-3-4-5.
Plus guys, last year we only had 138 licensed riders...we're not like KS or MO or IA or just about any state that can support full fields in both open races and Masters fields. I'm sorry...but it just looks plain silly when we line up for a race and only 10 guys are racing the open race and 10 guys are racing the masters race. Racing is about pack racing...not time trialing...unless of course you are time trialing. Again...master races were invented as a way to divert riders from FULL open race fields. We don't have that problem.
Let the frenzy begin...
2 comments:
Thanks for putting the correct spin on the masters situation Kevin.
whatever man i waited all these years to race masters and now you wanna do away with them? booo! just kidding, i could care less.
now get off my lawn.
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