River Gorge

This weekend was the River Gorge Omnium in Chattanooga, Tn, easily my favorite weekend of regional racing of the year. The time trial saturday night and crit sunday are cool in their own right but what makes this weekend great is Saturday morning's road race: 64 miles with a 4k climb smack dab in the middle, plenty of rollers and shorter climbs and a stiff 5k finish climb up to the top of the Racoon Mtn tva facility. Also, the volunteers and organization are top notch and chattanooga is an awesome town.

Road Race:
We had some of the Jittery Joe's boys, the DLP team and Doug Ollerenshaw of Rock Racing lining up this weekend to slug it out with some of the best regional guys. The race started pretty hard with some early attacks and a tough pace over the early hills. Ollerenshaw and Mike Olheiser were in a six-man break that went up the road and gained a minute-ish on the pack.

I stayed at the front most of the day but apparently the field split up a good bit on the run in to Sand Mountain. We lit it up on that climb and everything exploded. I had a bit of trouble at first but settled into a good rythm and made the lead split of four over the climb. Meanwhile, up the road Olehiser and Ollerenshaw shattered the breakaway to just them as we road through the cracked riders. Ty Stanfield was up there and jumped in with us, and Matt caught on with Dirk Pohlman for the descent. We shelled those guys on a quick climb later and that left Trent Wilson, That Dulin, Jonathan Jacobs and myself chasing (with no success) Ollerenshaw and Olheiser. I got worked over almost 30 miles of headwind/crosswind chasing (I'm blaming my increasingly climber-like physique, or maybe those guys are just better than me?) and cracked 100 meters into the finish climb. I road my own pace and held on for a very solid sixth (and first cat 2!).

Time Trial: Not much to say. It's not often I ride a poor tt, especially when I'm in good form, but I did Saturday night. After a brief, very steep climb near the start there was a lot of screaming fast downhill sections and some techy stuff. Apparently I missed the class on how to do that and something bigger than a 53 would have been nice. Ended up 11th.

Crit: The course started wet and really treacherous with brick crosswalks in two corners. Throughout the race it dried out which was nice. I pulled a sweet move for a front row start and was pretty glad I did when Tim Henry attacked from the gun. I sat near the front most of the race and enjoyed the hell out myself, which I normally don't do in a crit. Matt got up the road in a group of four and I just stayed towards the front and covered olheiser and thad dulin to keep them from getting across. Those guys must have been hauling and got a solid gap. Matt ended up 2nd. He also had a strong ride in the tt so moved into 2nd for the Omnium. I slid myself into a solid spot with a lap to go but narrowly missed death in the 2nd to last corner and did a half-sprint for a top 20 (19th, to be exact). I dropped like a rock on the omnium standings but still ended up 1st Cat 2 for the weekend.

Not sure yet what the plan is for next weekend, I may do 100k or might go spectate US pro in greenville and do some training up there. Then it's Univest and Dahlonega for sure, followed by whatever I can find. Racing bikes is pretty damn fun right now.