Speed Week

Or should I say Speed Day? Right after Tour de Ephrata, I spent Sunday night in Philly and drove all day Monday down to Savannah, GA for a couple of the speed week races. I took at quick detour to my house in Richmond, did a joggy jog, showered, and jumped back in the car to continue the 700 mile drive south. It weird how some days driving can be fun, and other days it’s a complete drag. This was one of those days where I did not mind at all, especially once I got through the Philly/ Wilmington/ Baltimore/ DC traffic. Once you get south of Richmond on Interstate 95, its smooth sailing all the way to Jacksonville, FL. After leaving Philly at 8am, I finally made it to Savannah at 7:45 that night, nearly 12 hours later.

The USA Crits Speed Week series is a week long event, with each crit having around $10,000 of prize money, with races ranging from southern NC, GA, and SC. The 2 races I signed up for were Beaufort, and Walterboro. I had to get back to work on Friday, and I was also racing the rescheduled Jeff Cup race in Charlottesville, VA on May 8^th.

To my luck, both of the races were at twilight and went on until the sun went day. The start time for Beaufort was 7:30pm on Tuesday, which gave me a little bit of time to recover from the drive and get my mind set on racing. The day leading up to the race was chill and relaxing. I didn’t do anything too strenuous, unless you count walking as hard work. I ended up going over to Oatland Island Wildlife center, and lurked on the animals they had. I will never remember the difference between bison and buffalo, but they had 3 of those, a pack of wolves, bird, deer, gators, foxes, panthers (or something resembling them), and a lot of other stuff I don’t remember. Other than the obnoxious horseflies, the place was pretty awesome!

Around 4:30ish that afternoon, I rolled on up to Beaufort to throw down some big watts. The womens’ pro race was right before the mens, so it was nice walking around the course to see how people took the corners. The crit was only 1km in length, and had 4 corners. Not too technical, but I knew with 100 guys in the field, I would need to get a decent start spot or else I would be up the creek without a paddle. Unfortunately, everything I say I am going to do, I end up not doing it…so yeah, I rolled up and basically the whole field was there already. Crap, in the back again!

I knew to keep calm the first 20 minutes because that is usually when the pace is super fast. I rolled around, just following the people in front of me because I could not do anything else. The course was so short, and so fast, that it was nearly impossible to move up once the pace got rolling. About 30 minutes into the race, I found my sitting comfortably in the middle, but by then a breakaway already got out and was coming up on lapping the field. As I rode around in circles, I find that I get really bored. My race had 75 laps, and turning the laps around in 1:20 meant it would take around 90 minutes. As the race went on, it was fun to notice that the light was getting dimmer and dimmer each lap as the sun was setting. The turn one corner on the course smelling like a farm because it was stacked with about a ton of hay. Turn 2 smelled like all the chain smokers found each other and were lighting up. Turn 3 had the pungent smell of burnt rubber, from the brake pads slowing down the wheelsets of 75 riders. And the last corner smelling like sea water, since the wind was blowing from that direction. About 45 minutes into the race, my back was in agonizing pain, which I assumed was from the long drive. I stuck with the race though, and was definitely holding my own. Unfortunately, 30 minutes later I ended up pulling out due to back spasms. I figured everything would be ok, and the next day I could race again. I was exhausted, in pain, and all I could think about was how much ice cream would help the healing process…