Last local race for awhile

This weekend was the Perry weekend of racing, about 30 minutes south of Macon. Last year was the only year since I've started racing that I haven't done this race, and it was fun to be back this year. Since I missed the race in Macon last year and will again this year Perry is as 'local' as I've ever gotten to race. I had a good ride in the TT and took the W by a solid margin. Once upon a time time trialing was my bread and butter but the last couple years I just haven't raced very many. Hopefully this year that changes and I can put together some good tts at bigger races.

whoa

So hopefully most people reading this have heard by now, but I'm moving to Wales next week. Pretty crazy.

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out this)

The season is shaping up great and I can't wait to be over in Europe and in the races. I'll miss the Southeast, not to mention Chik-fil-a and Mexican food, but it's a great opportunity for me.

happenings

Team Kenda Pro Cycling presented by Geargrinder was in town this past week for their pre-season training camp. I was on this team 2 years ago when they were amateur and it's been exciting to watch them grow into a Pro team. I was lucky enough to be able to ride with them all week and catch up with some people I've known for awhile, and meet some other good guys. Good luck to those guys with their season. Macon cyclists take note, everyone on the team loved the riding around here and had nothing but good things to say about our local training grounds. We are lucky to have some great riding in this area.

Also, after doing this blog thing for awhile, a friend of mine is helping me start up my own website. Soon you'll be able to find this blog and a ton of other stuff over at Christianparrett.com. Check that out mid next week to see the website, not to mention some pretty exciting news.

oh Greenville

The first weekend of the Greenville Training series has come and gone. Hopefully the races served their purpose and give me some fitness and leg speed. Like most 'training' races, everyone was racing full out and occasionally doing stupid things like crashing. Also, as is the norm for training races, most people are out on their brand new team bikes with race wheels. I tried to one up everybody by racing on my trusty 4 year old training bike, but a few people were there on cyclocross bikes, so I'm not sure who wins that competition.

Anyway, race reports from local races are boring, so Saturday I was in a breakaway for a while, got caught, race winning counter went instantly without me. Made some unnecessary hard efforts for training, got out of the way in the sprint for 9th. Sunday I attacked with two guys early on, road away, botched the finale and got 2nd. I'm embarrassed I didn't win, I probably should have. One of the riders in the break is a good friend of mine and we wanted to make sure the third guy who wasn't doing much work didn't win (no hostility, he wasn't being a punk, just couldn't work as hard). So my buddy took a manly win and I still can't sprint, end of that story.

More important things from the weekend:
-I was reminded Monday that you need to plan things to do the day after races otherwise you are bored with post-race depression all day.

-Thanks to my rad hotwire.com skills we stayed in an awesome hotel for $13 bucks a person.

-I lost my World Champion of Foosball title. I'm disappointed in myself and training hard to get it back.

-There was a problem on the interstate on the way home that had traffic at a standstill, but we managed to find a sketchy backroad way around the problem and make awesome time getting home, that was a victory in itself.

Now that racing season is picking up I'll have more to share on this thing and probably update more often.

mother nature is such a tease

Maybe going to the bahamas wasn't that good an idea, after some good weather in Ga and this:



my body was all excited for spring, tanlines, and sunburns. But no, now I'm back to this nonsense:




You'd think Macon is better, but snow is preferable to 5 degrees warmer and pouring rain.....

Bahamas

Tour of the Bahamas went well. With Floyd Landis showing up, the Garmin devo team bringing 6 riders, and some super strong Florida-based riders, the race was much tougher than I was expecting.

Saturday morning was a 42 mile circuit race on a 6 mile lap. A move went pretty early with some garmin development guys and a rider from one of the stronger florida teams. When another group started to go up the road I bridged across to them, then we road across to the riders in front to make a group of 11. That group eventually split, with me making the leading group of 6. I had good legs but Garmin had 3 guys in there so it was never gonna end but one way. They worked me over and got 2 guys up the road. Their third guy got to sit on the last few miles and beat me by half a wheel in the sprint, but I was reasonably happy with 4th.

Riding to the 3 mile tt later in the day I discovered one of the bearings in my pedals was broken and the pedal was frozen badly enough I could barely turn it with my hand. I looked for a quick fix but with so little time I had to race on the damaged pedal. Despite all the extra resistance I put down a good ride and placed 4th again in the TT, just a few seconds out of 2nd but 8 or 9 back from Landis. Would have been nice to know how much faster I could have gone with a pedal that worked. The tt put me in 3rd overall going into the road race.

Sunday was a hard, windy 90 mile road race. All day we were going hard in crosswinds or sprinting to cover attacks. Unfortunately one of my teammates was hurting pretty bad and the other helped out but missed the split a little over halfway through. So this led to me taking it on the head pretty good trying to cover attacks form a couple different teams. I handled it ok but could tell I was cracking towards the finish. I attacked at one point trying to get enough time to get 2nd on GC, but ended up getting caught, counterattacked, and dropped. Lost a couple spots on GC at the end but ended up 5th or 6th I think. Losing a spot on the podium was pretty disappointing, but then I remembered I was in the Bahamas and got over it.

a few more

If you can't tell, I really like snow, here's a few more pictures

Oh yeah, it's 2010. Race season almost here already? Yep, I'm starting at Tour of the Bahamas in a week and a half. Giddyup.