On Friday morning I set out to get to Atlanta for Memorial Weekend. Only problem is that Boulder Super Shuttle wouldn't pick me up from my house early enough for my flight, so I had to walk down to the bus station by 3.25am. I got to the bus stop at 3.23am to see the bus pulling away. It's all good being on time, but not leaving early. Panicking, I rang the shuttle company who said if I could get to 30th and Baseline by 4am they could take me: time to start running. On the way I see a backpacker walking the other. She stops and asks me if we could catch the bus. I explained what happened, to which she replied she had a car and we could drive there. Sweet. Big thanks to Erin from Alaska for getting me to the shuttle on time.
I arrived in muggy Atlanta and headed off tot he hotel where we were being set up with the navigator continuous glucose readers. These are pretty cool devices which gives a continues reading of blood glucose plus projected direction to predict hypo/hyperglycemia. Sweet. I've named my navigator Nanny Nancy the Navigator, since it helps look after me, it would have to be a nanny.
That evening at 9.30pm we started our first race, a 1 hour crit. The tour of Atlanta I'm riding not with the pro team who I normally ride but with the RAAM team for training. 7 of us took the start line. 23min into the race and I was the last from our team to be pulled out. Not so good, but given the traveling and lack of sleep we had all had, the race went in the "can't be ****ed" basket. Especially given how stupid some of the riders in the race were.
Saturday morning and we woke up with a road race to look forward to in the afternoon. 90 miles, 4 laps, KOM each lap. But this was changed on the start to 3 laps, after a we had a vote on the start line. Disappointing, but 3 laps for 110km still sounded good. Sounded much more fun than a dodgy crit. Then less than 2 minutes into the race though 15 riders hit the deck going 20-25km/hr. Idiots. Apparently there was another crash 10min later, but it was behind me and I never heard it.
I stayed at the front of the bunch at the start and covered a few moves, but nothing was sticking. One move did look promising, so I decided I should try to get in it. The riders were bunching up, and I was on the left of the center line. I wasn't getting back right of it when some riders when up the road, so I passed a few riders and began chasing. Just as I bridged up the race ref pulled me up for riding on the wrong side of the road and ordered that i go to the back. Arrghh. I would have spent more time on the left if I hadn't done what I did!!! Well that pissed me off and put me out of any chance of doing anything.
We got some heavy rain and a bit of wind during the race. On the 2nd lap there was another big crash when people decided that it was a good idea to go straight over railway lines that were wet and on an angle. Idiots. After the first few crashes, and this one, it made me think people down here down know how to ride bikes. This was reiterated when there were strong enough Cross winds to thin the race a bit, yet the teams at the front are riding in the middle of the road, and not that quick. But I guess that's not as bad as a certain team that were sitting on the back of a 70 man peleton with less than 5km to go discussing if they should go for the sprint. Well maybe tomorrow, cause you're not doing it today.
The day ended with with Andy our top finisher in 28th. It wasn't that hard a day's racing, but it could have been. Let's now see how tomorrow works out.
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