Earlier this week, May 12th to be exact, I finally became a full time bike racer. Having finished my last semester of college, return date is unknown, and quiting my Starbucks 9 to 5 job I was ready to hit the road for the summer. First stop, Colorado Springs, CO.

    The start to my summer was not a good as I had planned. I was packing up the last of my apartment and got a bad case of food poisoning, so in between trips down three flights of stairs and runs to the bathroom to give "praise to the Porcelain God" I moved out of my apartment and crashed at a friends. Things went from bad to worse as I got even sicker later in the night. All this with 2 days of driving ahead of me.

    Well I wake up feeling better the next day and the two days of travel to Colorado went well. I made sure to drink a lot of water and take the drive easy. I arrived in Colorado on Wednesday and was lucky enough to get host housing from a friend of friend situation. The family I am with is really cool and David is a long time cyclist with OLN (live Giro rules) and a library of cycling videos. To top things off he's got a 1.5MB DSL line (surfing TXBRA has never been so fun).

     Ok, back to the story, the first two days I am here it rains and rains. Just that constant Belgian style that never gets bad but never quits. I was forced to ride rollers while the mountains and beautiful terrain taunted me. Friday was a great day, a complete 180 on the previous two days, it was full of sun and lots of cool weather. I go and ride the Air Force road race course. It's full of long smooth roads, one killer 4-5k hill and a lot of smaller inclines over the 9-mile course. I complete one lap on Friday and add a couple of miles piddling around the base and call it a day. The crit is the next day and I don't want to go to hard.

    I wake up Saturday and there is no sun to be seen, only clouds. Damn, the weather did another 180 on me, it's now 50 degrees and rain began at 12 noon. It's pouring hard when I arrive at the race course just before the Women's race start. I start my race at 2:30pm in fair to very light rain for 70 min + 5 laps on a technical 8-corner course.

    I get to race Division II, schools with smaller teams and smaller number of students at their school. The race starts off fast as everyone fights for a position at the front. I ended up attacking on the backstretch and move to the front for the first couple of laps. As soon as things settle down I move back to the protection of the pack. There was a good deal of attacks in the race, but they all failed. Every one was a solo attempt which would gain a maximum of about 12 seconds and then the pack would chase hard enough to catch the person. The process was then repeated. This lead to me deciding to forgo a plan of trying to take a flyer and a new plan of sitting in, letting the big teams do the work and stay in for the sprint finish.

    Fastforward through lots of cold and wet laps to 5 to go … it is 5 laps to go, the pack is now been whittled down and people are attacking, I missed a nasty crash in the final corner and decide it's time to move up to the front. I attacked in the 3rd and 4th corners of the course and move to the front and set a steady tempo. I stay at the front in the top three at all times making sure to jump onto anyone's wheel that was trying to make a flyer. With two go an attack was launched and I hung on in second position. The rider was going for the long sprint and kept tempo for the first lap and with one to go launched it into turbo speeds.

    I stayed glued to his wheel until the back side of the course where I went with everything I had left. One rider was able to pass me on the slight uphill, into the third to last corner I was hugged to his wheel, in the next corner he gapped me, and in the final corner I lost contact. There went any chance of the Stars and Bars jersey, so I gritted my teeth and drag raced to the finish only to be nipped by another rider by six inches. 3rd, its not first or second, but it is on the podium (hope there are some podium girls at awards on Sunday!)

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The uphill never ends...

    Like I was saying before, the weather here in Colorado is ever changing. I woke up to beautiful sunny sky's and temperatures running into the high 70's. I was feeling very sore from the crit but ready to do some hurting. I arrived at the road race a little early and watched the Women's finish.

    The start of the road race was straight up a 4-5k climb. Our group started out fast but no one wanted to really push the pace with 63 miles to go. The course is awesome, but very deceptively hard. There are no real flat sections, well a mile on back side, but everything else is up or down with 900 feet of climbing each lap.

    The first lap hurt, but I was rolling along with the pack just fine, trying to recover on every downhill and keep the pain to a minimum on each uphill. The second lap went very well and I felt great. But the third lap was different.

    On the third time up the hill the big breaking attack came. I managed to get on the back of the front six guys and was doing great for the high climbing pace, but with 1k to go on the main climb my legs began to really hurt and I suffered to the top. The pack regrouped as everyone was attacking to keep the split. We rolled along through the Cadet Athletic area that is all a long gradual uphill. The attacks began to seize the legs as we were just coming to the downhill. I was shucked off the back and chased to return with another rider. I went hard on the short downhill just before another short uphill and came within 5 meters of the pack, but my legs were blown, the pack went speeding down the long downhill section on the backside and I was OFB (off the back). I made it to the finish area and went up the climb, but it was all over and I called it a day. My stomach was giving me problems and I have bigger fish to fry with Tour of Somerville in just one week.

    Overall this was a great trip and a good showing of my developing form. My next stop is going to be the East Coast in the next couple of days. Texas schools laid down the nasty this weekend with some great rides. Oh and about that weather changing, as the road race was rapping up a cold front blew in, by the awards ceremony at 7pm it was snowing with temperatures in the 20's.

    See ya on the road.

    Gregg "A flatlander put in his place" Germer