Sour Taste

Where do I begin? Check out this little video, this is what the past 2 weeks have been like for me at home? Where did the warm summer go?








It has been pretty crazy, in July it was upper 20's here and I was even able to bust out a pair of shorts on a few occasions. Now, it has not broken 16 degrees, around 60 degrees and I have essentially put away any short sleeved shirts. Craziness. Everyone is saying how bizarre it is and that September will get better, I hope. It is certainly not fun having lots of stuff wet all the time.

But, on to more important things, what I came to Europe to do, race my bike. Oh yeah, fun times for sure. Headed off to a race today with my teammate. I was pretty darn excited to get to a new area today and I got to pretty much race on the coastline of Normandy. Given all the rain lately, it really felt like I was on the Oregon coast. The only thing that I am missing was some salt water taffy and tillamook ice cream. Yummy. But, back to the racing. I knew that it was going to be super important to be attentive all day long given the fact that it was wet and people would not be all that excited. Thankfully that attentiveness got me into the breakaway in all of about 4 kilometers and bam, things are setting up to be a good day. Little did I know that I was settling in for 3 hours off the front of the race. At times with the wind, it was pretty damn disappointing to look down and see that I was barely going 20 kilometers an hour as hard as we could go into a headwind, man oh man. But, the 7 of us were at least moving and even though we were working pretty poorly together, we were still distancing the field.

Let me give you some background right now. I am racing in the amateur division right now and there is another level above me. I have quite a bit of motivation in my races because I have spoken to a few of the teams above me and they all say that I need 3 more wins to move up to them, well all be damned, I am going to work my tail off to get there.

Back to the race and things are looking pretty. I am at 20 kilometers to the finish and thinking about what I need to do to win this thing when boy, this just got really hard, whats up. I look down and uh oh, I am a bit squishy in that there front wheel. Well damn, I pull off super quick hoping to get a wheel change, remember my director is still on vacation. But, a few guys in the break with me have flatted today and got back into the race, no worries. First car passes me and I look at them but nothing, second car passes and nothing. So goes the process until there are no more cars to look at.

It is at this moment that I realize, no one is going to stop for me and I have just watched my chance of winning this thing ride away from me. I can taste my breakfast as the gut wrenching realization sets in. None of the other teams' cars stopped to help me and I had to wait until the rest of the field caught up to me for help. To try to explain the thoughts that ran through my head in that minute will never be possible. All I can say is that the one minute felt like days. Little did I know, that one teammate had quit the race already after a flat and another had flatted but got back in. With the rain, flats were common today if you haven't noticed. Eventually I rolled in with the rest of the field to finish the day pretty bummed.

So I sit here now at home, I did everything right today, just luck was not on my side. There was nothing I would have done differently. I had a plan, executed it to best that I could, but there isn't anything that can be done about flats. Onto the next race now.