Total Pageviews

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Shenanigans at Killington

It's 1pm on Thursday afternoon and I am completely burnt out from this past week. Driving up to Killington Friday night to race Sat, Sun, and Mon then rushing home Monday night to pass out and wake up to take a group of 11 men on a 3 day therapeutic camping trip has left me worthless on this perfectly beautiful afternoon. So I will write this blog in a relieved daze from my couch with the window open.
           Let's start with Killington Mountain Stage Race. It was my second ever stage race and first 3 day race. I met up with my buddies Krystian, Luciano, Dan, Brad, Braedin, and Uri up in Killington, we rented a 2 bedroom condo to fit all 7 of us for the long weekend. The first day of racing was a 72 mile circuit race. On the 2nd lap the pack was descending a mountain at around 45mph and all of a sudden a big group of people were crashing in front of me and I knew right away I could do nothing about this because I was in the middle of the pack and the crash was happening directly in front of me. So I grabbed both breaks as hard as I could and braced myself, sure enough I slammed right into somebody, went over my bars and landed right on top of Hot Tubes rider Curtis White, then someone crashed on top of me and drove their front wheel into my lower abdomen, right where I had a hernia operation about 3 years ago. Everything happened so fast and as soon as we all came to a stop I jumped up, grabbed my bike, put my chain back on, realized my bike was ok and hopped on. I was the only rider in that crash to get up and immediately start chasing the pack down. The group was about 100 yards away and I knew I had my work cut out for me to chase them back. My heart-rate sky-rocketed and my legs were burning so badly I just could not clear the lactic acid from them. I rode so hard that I saw stars and got tunnel vision. It took me about 20 minutes of going as hard as I could to catch back onto the group and when I finally caught the back I proceeded to throw up all over myself. It felt so good to know I was in contention again. We rocked a couple more laps of very agressive riding and I made the right move at the end and was in the clear for the sprint, so I went for it and took 3rd in the field sprint grabbing some upgrade points for the weekend!!!
                 The second day was an 11 mile time trial and I have only done a handfull of practice time trials and this would only be my second official one. I am borrowing a bike from a local guy Peter Greer, here in the Berkshires and the bike is a bit small for me with an integrated seat-post so I didn't have the option of making the post higher. So I took things into my own hands and got creative. I took an extra saddle I had lying around and duct taped it to the original saddle. Now this looks ridiculous but is very effective and it made the bike a perfect fit for my long femurs. I took 24th in the Time Trial and I was content with my time of 26:50 for the 11 miles.
              The third day was a brutal 62 mile road race through the mountains of central Vt. The race started on a 25 mile descent over some of the worst condition roads I have raced on. People's bottles were flying out and it was just very sketchy riding. After the long descent there was a brutal climb up this steep hill and I ended up in a group of about 25 guys for the rest of the race. About 5 miles before the final climb to the top of Killington the larger group we had dropped caught us and all 80 of us were together for the start of the giant climb. This climb was super brutal, I have never raced up something so steep before. Picture the steepest part of the north side of Greylock and make that 5 miles long, it was horrible. I don't think I have suffered that much on a bike ever (I say this about every race). Anyways, I ended up in 21st place in this race which got me 20th place overall for the GC.
          I learned a lot about how I race this past weekend and I know I have a lot to work on. But hey, anything worth doing is worth doing right, same goes with anything in life.
        So this weekend was a total success, I am happy I didn't get horribly hurt in that high speed crash and I wish a speedy recovery to the 7 or so dudes who were taken to the hospital and sustained injuries.
     My next big race is the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic!!!! Hometown race. This will be my first time doing the Longsjo and should be a really fun weekend. The whole family will be there watching and hopefully my fitness will be peaking and I can do really well at this one!
       I just spent the last 3 days on the mountain with an amazing group of men in early recovery. We had some musicians and all of them really wanted to be there which made for a really great trip. I was able to teach them some nature therapy stuff and get them out having direct experiences in nature, I love my job and my co-worker Jeremy Lombard rocks as well.




      That's all for now!!! See ya'll soon!!!!!


1 comment:

  1. Hi Tim,

    Great post! I can't imagine racing in our lovely mountains, and am sooo impressed! It's been great following your exploits from afar - or not so far. Keep ip the grea work - dreams live off being fed.

    ReplyDelete