I went down to the ride assembly area trying not to think about the flat TT's that awaited me. I was expecting to lose huge chunks of time to Matt Spinks and pretty much everybody else, but I was thinking, at least I did good on Monday.
We rode out to the start of the repeats, lined up, and started them. On the first one my foot clipped out. I got to restart it, but noticed my cleat was chipped on the back. From then on I was careful not to pull up on it that hard, but still gave a maximum effort.
After 2 of the intervals I was dead. After three I was really dead. As I lined up for the last one I was just looking forward to being done with these things.
I started the last one fast and just tried to power through it. I hammered to the finish, turned around, and went to a park were we ate lunch. I tried to eat but couldn't because I was so nauseous, but that was probably a good thing because I knew I went hard enough.
After lunch we took the long way to a "big ring", but long climb near Saluda. We started the climb and raced to the summit. I moved up to the top 10 pretty quickly, but when the climb was steep enough to create a gap I was tired and still warming up. It was all I could do to stay with the front 7 riders for the first half of the climb. There were numerous attacks, and pretty soon I launched one myself, but didn't get a gap. Another flurry of attacks, and then I got to the front and really went hard. I pulled off only to have Jacob Arnold counter-attack me. I was too tired to go with him. Only Travis, one of the camp staff/coaches, a cat. 1, could follow him the whole way up.
Near the top I took a hard pull hoping to catch them, but all of a sudden I saw the finish line. Will Richter sprinted past me, and I tried to pass him, but it was too late. We rode over the top and descended to Saluda.
We regrouped at the Wildflower bakery for a long stop. From there we descended from Saluda, and got back down to the bottom of the climb just before it started raining. Then we rode about 1.5 or 2 hours back to campus.
DAY 6: Friday, June 12th, 2009
I rode down to the start of a really fun, optional easy ride at 8:00 a.m., got back, packed up my stuff, and left. That ended a great week in Greenville. Hopefully I'll come back next year. An NC State Championship post is coming soon.
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