Early Bird Road Race

It's already been discussed ad naseum on my team's listserver, facebook and again on our team blog so I'll just point you here. Actually I'm pretty excited. My first win ever and against what seemed to be a strong field of about 40 racers. Keeping it in perspective though -- early season race in novice old man category. Not exactly one of the NCNCA monuments (maybe it should be) but I'll gladly take it! Best out and back course I've been on. Scenic rollers, low traffic, nice hill but descent can be sketchy. This year was mild. I've heard that ice and large rocks on the road make it even more dangerous on those blind corners and cattle guards.

2009 already!?!?

Kickstarted the year at San Bruno. I was hoping for a new PR but lack of discipline the night before totally derailed that effort. I was ready to hurl 2 minutes into the hill. A lame 15 minute warm up didn't help. Thanks to Jason Snovel for yelling encouragement as I started to roll backwards. Focused on my bro's wheel and managed to recover a few minutes later. My warm down around Brisbane was 3X longer than the warm up and the race combined!

2008 Results

Forget the 2008 results. Still clueless about how to train let alone race. My best result was Cantua RR where there were only 8 guys in my field. We decided to keep the group together until the last ramp up the finish hill. I think we spent more time teaching guys how to rotate in a paceline than actually racing. We ended up getting pretty smooth and caught and passed several packs from other categories that started ahead of us.

2008 Recap

Spent the early part of 2008 thinking too much about the crash and even got obsessed with crashes in general but once the race rides started and season got going I started to spend less time thinking about crashing and more time thinking about riding, just riding. A couple of events rattled me though -- a crash at Paskenta that took out then DBC Junior Alex Wick and another at Merco RR that took out Jason Eiserich. Both recovered very well and have resumed racing.

As I focused more on riding and less about the crash the year just seem to accelerate! Throw in DBC masters rides, The Showdown, Wheelworks race rides, Aggie Race Rides, DBC T/Th Race Rides plus all other training rides and my 2008 season went like this:

San Bruno Hill Climb

Cherry Pie

Cantua Creek RR

Dinuba Crit

Snelling RR

Merco RR

Berkeley TTT

Bariani RR

Copperopolis RR

Ronde van Brisbeen Circuit

Wards Ferry RR

Madera stage race

Wente RR

EBC Crit

Berkeley Hills RR

Mt Hamilton RR

Specialized/SN Crit (2 races)

Burlingame Crit

4th of July (2 races)

Vacaville Crit

Spring Hill

Winters RR

Dunnigan RR

Folsom Crit (2 races)