The Week of Speed

There is something about racing your bike every single day that brings a certain calm to any one of those races that you happen to be doing. Especially when your first race is Athens Twilight. I wish I had a picture of that starting line - at least what it looked like from the back... 150+ races in front of me all twitching for the start, 20 people deep crowding the fences at the start/finish, the hazy 9 pm air lit up by the street lights. The first 10 laps of Athens are something like you have never done in bike racing. I could at least move up at Iron Hill - Athens turns men into dogs. It was good fun.
The rest of the week had some ups and downs. At Roswell, I moved Gabe up in the last 5 laps and he got on United HealthCare's leadout train... but lost his spot when he caught a stick in his spokes with 3 or 4 to go. At Beaufort, I was able to ride near the front of the race for the first 30 minutes, but cracked hard when the break was forming without the proper mix of riders in it. The rest of the week I took some shots at winning the Category 2/3 races and came close a few times. At Walterboro, I was able to kilo the last few corners and hold on for 2nd. At Spartanburg, I attacked solo with 5 laps to go and held on until 1 lap to go. And at Dilworth, I conserved my very tired legs all race and was able to get 6th.

I don't think I had enough base miles in to really take advantage of the hard training of Speed Week. But I certainly won't be as nervous for bike racing after that week of madness.