"the iron horse bicycle classic"...so as it happens there's a little bit of climbing involved.

my wheel is still in the shop, so not wanting to race 'the beast'...who i finally found a home for by the way, some overly talkative fellow who looked like levi leipheimer with freckles...i naturally borrowed a wheel from the spoke. i took it out on a training ride the last thursday to demo it before leaving to durango on friday, and whilst in red rocks a spoke unexpectedly snapped. the wheel was deemed un-ride-home-able, so i tried calling several people with little success and eventually came to scott's name in the contacts list. yay scott! so while i was riding in the car back to du with him i casually threw out a question pertaining to the course of the iron horse road race. any climbing scott?

this was taken verbatim from the iron horse website..."Climb a heck of a lot of vertical feet (5700ft) and scale two almost 11,000 foot mountain passes on this 48 mile ride through Colorado's San Juan Mountain range."

...sufficing to say i had a fantastic time.

i rode down with co-author of the oats book, ben, in his saab hatchback, which was "born from a jet" apparently...pretentious piece of shit kept mentioning it everytime ben would shift, "third gear, eh? well, may i just point out to you that i come from a rather prestigious lineage of jets." then it would make some ridiculously loud noise, which im guessing was its feeble attempt at an aircraft fly-by sound effect, kinda like "WHOOSH!" (the noise would travel from the passenger speakers to those next to the driver in order to simulate the doppler effect.) the fly-by sound effects were inconsequential in light of the bitching that occurred when ben filled up with 'regular' unleaded...anyways, being the responsible gents that we both arent we might have forgotten about a few things...
- a place to sleep...'look, see this...that's a car, two-hundred and seventy-five thou...might want to hang on to that one.'
- registration?
- start times?

the 'place to sleep' quandary was easily remedied after calling corey, only to find that he was sleepin' with my brother...i mean his parents...and he gave us the number of the host house that we stayed with when we were down in durango for the fort lewis race. the fellow's name is dustin, and he was more than happy to accomadate two weary travelers last minute. it was quite thrilling to do the whole college student/unplanned/show up at your door/mooch thing. dustin's a neat kid that used to race in the collegiate scene, as well as as a cat. 2...his weekend project involved a hard-smoothy business, using a blender that was hooked up to a stationary bike. he also rode the entirety of the iron horse - 48 miles - on a single speed with a coaster brake, wearing flip flops and a cape. neato.



the road race was on saturday and went well all things considered. orbea kid (also known as matt beck from the U. of NM) managed to crash into me within the first five, very calm, very level miles of the start. ass. his bars ended up wrapped around my seat post and one of his carbon bottle cages broke and entwined itself in one of my rear spokes? This was probably orbea kid's 12th crash this year, in which he hit the pavement, and most likely the least costly of the 12...carbon bottle cage? fifty dollars tops. far better that than a carbon wheelset, or frame for that matter. it became instantly apparent that orbea kid had sabotaged my rear derailleur in the crash, probably with a knife, when it refused to go down in to my smallest two cogs...the 12 and 13. not that i really had any chance of winning the race to begin with, but i would say that this veritable nail in the coffin ensured my fate. i wish i was uma thurman...and no, not so i could look at myself naked.

"dear orbea kid,
are you aware that you are gross? does it suck big time to have road rash every waking moment of cycling season...if you rode rollers in the winter replace 'cycling season' with 'your life'? you should be bisexual, it would increase your chances.
sincerely,
colin don"



...okay, but yeah, i caught back up to the slow moving cat. 4/5 peloton. at the first hill, approximately ten miles in, the 75 rider pack got split up. ben, eric, and i comprised three of the twelve man lead group. our group stuck together, dropping only two guys over the course of approximately 15 miles(?). i was content with hanging on to a wheel on the up hill; eric and ben were doing a good job of leading some of the climbs with a deviant pace. when we assembled into a paceline on the descents i was able to keep the cadence high and get into the rotation. i was popped off at the start of first, of two, big ascents...thanks eric moore. eric tried to break and the pace went up ten fold. i rode the ascents alone, excepting when a two of the cat. 3 riders grabbed my wheel on the way up molas pass. they wanted me to stick with them on the descent but without my 12 in the back i could not, which im sure they, having no clue that my derailleur was malfunctioning, percieved as mental weakness. i descended into silverton, mentally beaten, trying to present facade of strength by burying myself down the main strip into the finish.

i drank a 'tab energy drink' after the race, which was exceedingly gross. luna-bar tea cakes on the other hand...

i ended up in ninth place and won a swell looking sweatshirt/hoodie. ben placed fourth, and i think eric took sixth. congratulations all. i beat orbea kid (ass), and in the game of life this is all that truly matters.

on sunday morning ben, dustin, corey, corey's parents and i went to the local diner, since our races werent until the afternoon. i had blueberry pancakes and an egg.

the criterium on sunday..."It takes experience to know that sometimes you have to go so hard that your left testicle comes out your right ear, and only then will it start to get easier"...was hard. the course is drawn out in the photo posted below. i had a really good start and got up front quickly, which limited experience has taught me is probably how you should do it. i held on to the lead pack for a long while, a few breaks went away and then would be quickly reeled in. i dont know how long we were into the 50 min. crit, but a break containing eric moore went away and stayed away...to my surprise. corey was on the steamworks brewery corner with his dad and mom, whose cries of positive affirmation were easily discernable amongst the spectators, and was providing helpful commentary. so after a few laps at the back of the chase group i decided to use what energy i had left to catch the break. we got close, and i think if someone had kept the pace up after i dropped off the front we could have done it. a few laps later i got popped off the chase group and rode the rest of the crit alone. i didnt get lapped by the break, but i could hear the moto behind me on their final lap. out of a thirty-five man field, only twelve ended up finishing. i ended up in tenth, and won twenty-five dollars for getting fourth in the omnium (road race + crit = onmium). eric finished third and got 1st in the omnium. ben was crashed within the last five laps, for the second weekend in a row, and did not finish. we stuck around to watch steve forbes in the three's race and corey in the pro-1,2 race. i drove us home, and didnt even fall asleep behind the wheel...like last time. we said bon voyage to durango at around 7:30 and pulled in to denver at about 2:15. fun weekend. i cant wait to do it again.



vanity at its best...the only thing that would make any of these photos better is zach 'milkshake' valdez, in the background with the pain face on. (the photos are small because the photographers website has a no copy/paste spell placed on all of the expanded photos, probably as some sort of ill-conceived scheme to actually sell copies.)







...i was a little bored.