80 mile RR x2 (Salisbury NC)

Jay, LL and I headed up to Salisbury, NC this weekend for 2 of their state championship road races. Sat was the age groups, Sunday the categories. Since LL is the young pup Jay and I raced "down" in his 35+ category. We stayed in a room above a Salisbury bike shop that was set up by the guys at Carolina Masters (Nice guys who we've battled at nearly every race the last 2 years!)

Sat: This was the 30/35+. Jay and I were on early break duty and

we took turns following attacks. Then once LL worked his way up he launched and took a few people with him. This break stuck and he got 4th after pseudo-pro Rich Harper bridged solo up to them (Jay and I were just out of position to follow...would have been sweet). We then rode near the front covering the following attacks with Jay watching the 3 strongest guys and me trying to follow whoever else. I did piss off a Cerevellum D-Bag who kept yelling at me to pull through after I would follow his multiple attacks...not gonna happen dude (I did try to be nice and explain the situation...then when that didn't work I just told him to F-off!).

Jay ended up getting away with Harkey and I just rode the field into the finish. It was a hot day and I was feeling pretty crampy near the end despite drinking about 4 bottles. I finished 11th 35+. LL 4th, Jay 5th.

Sun: This was the Pro 1,2,3 race. It was pretty stacked with Time dev team showing up and some other near "pro's". The field was huge...maybe 80 or more. We were all pretty tired and over breakfast there was lots of talk of "survival" and "sitting in" and "you (meaning the other two) need to get in the early break"...but once the race started Jay was off the front of course in a break of 8. He stayed away for about an hour and it would have definitely stuck if the Time guys didn't go to the front and peg it at about 28. We were absolutely flying, strung out...for a long, long time to catch them.

Once it all came together we just surfed the field and near the end a few guys got away then Jay and LL took turns attacking with each of them off solo for a while but nothing stuck. Coming into the sprint Jay said he'd try to lead me out so I was glued to his wheel and coming up to the last k we picked up LL and I yelled to Jay that we were all lined up so he nailed it from out over 1k and did some amazing riding to get us up near the front, bumping and dodging along the way. Not exactly a clean sprint but as is with most of these we were sooo close to having it open up for us. We lost LL in the argy-bargy and superman Jay ended up with 10th, me 16th, LL 22nd.

I felt really strong Sunday and not really that tired...I felt great on the little climbs and could pretty much ride where ever I wanted position wise. In retrospect I probably should have tried to be more active/aggressive near the end but I'm happy with how it turned out. Even though it was faster today (25.9 mph ave or faster than our tnwc...for 3 hours) I worked harder on Saturday doing team stuff.

<---The PMC chart is up to date...7 more hard days of training until Nats taper time. YooHoo!