OFF SEASON!

Hey everybody, I know it's been a while. A bunch has happened since April or so when I last posted on this blog. I raced at Nationals, the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic (a really big JR race that's tougher than 15-16 Nationals), the Green Mountain stage race, and at least 15 other races. I went to Regional camp, National camp, and drove across the country and back. Here is a summary of months from May thru October.

May: I didn't have any big races/events this month. Instead, I was doing my final cat. 3 races and preparing for Regional camp. I was doing well until late May, when this started going downhill. My best result was probably my cat. 3 win at the Downtown Wake forest crit and setting the junior record in the Lowes Motor speedway TT.

June: Started off with Regional camp. I felt bad thru the first 3 days of camp, felt better the last full day and improved gradually until Nationals. Nationals didn't go like I expected it to--I got 7th in the TT, 12th in the Crit (field sprint), and 21st in the RR (also a field sprint due to the length, just 35 miles). I generally felt pretty good, except in the road race where I felt really weak. After Nationals, my dad, Will Richter and myself drove to Fitchburg.

July: This month started of with the biggest Junior race of my season, the Fitchburg Longsjo classic. I was feeling pretty strong for this race, and hadn't felt bad since Regional camp, which is rare for me. I felt powerful the first day of Fitchburg (It's a 4 day long stage race), which is a 3 mile loop with a short, but really steep hill. I attacked on the last lap with Ian Boswell (Hot Tubes). He dropped back since I don't think he was trying to start a 2 man break, and I continued until 1.5 miles to go. At that point the field caught me, and I finished 18th.

The Road race was next, a tough but short 42 mile race on a loop with a 2 mile long hill. The finish line was situated in the middle of the hill, within sight of the top and the feed zone. On the first lap, three riders got away, all really strong and good climbers. At the base of the climb, the pace wasn't hard so I accelerated, not really attacked, and bridged to the breakaway at the top.
At that point we had maybe a 20 second lead. We worked together pretty well for maybe 5 miles, but then we were caught. I was surprised and kind of dissapointed by this since both the major teams(Hot Tubes and Garmin) were represented. After that, I recovered for a bit and just stayed at the front for the next 2 climbs up the hill. On the last lap, I wanted to be aggressive so I attacked, at the base of the final climb with about 600 meters to go. I got a small gap, but by the last corner some people passed me and I crossed the line in 13th. A break of 3 finished ahead of the pack.

The 3rd stage was the TT. I had high hopes for this event, but I also just had an off day, and got 11th. However, my time was over 2 minutes faster than last year. Lawson Craddock won the stage by less than a tenth of a second over Australia's Lachlan Morton.

The final stage of the race was a flat criterium. I felt petty good here, and got involved in a couple breaks. Nothing stuck though, but in the last lap a crash took out a big part of the field. I got 10th on the stage and 9th overall, out of 90 riders who started. Compare that to last year, when I got 21st out of about 55, and I did pretty good.

Later this month I did my first p/12 race, the French Broad Classic. It is a 3 day omnium with a TT the first day, then a mountain road race, then a crit the last day.

TT- this went pretty well. I went out just a little too hard, but felt good, and averaged 28.2 miles per hour, for about 21 kilometers. I was king of surprised that this was only good for 21st out of 35, but it just showed me how much higher the level in p/12 races is.

Next was the RR. I did not feel too good during this, but I stayed in the front group over the first climb (about 2,000 feet elevation gain, but gradual), and the countless hills on the route. On the last climb I didn't feel too good, maybe I bonked, but whatever the problem was I got 14th.

I felt even worse during the crit the next day, and I got dropped with about 6 laps to go. This was pretty demoralizing for me, and I went home trying to figure out how I could've done better.

August: Not much happened in August. I did a couple of races, but I was mainly preparing for September's Green mountain Stage race.

September: GMSR. This was my last big race of the season, my last chance to do well this season. The first day was a TT.

My strategy for this was too go nearly all out for the first 3 miles, which were uphill, and then try to hold it until the end. In hindsight this may not have been the best idea, but I did pretty well and got 7th.

Next was the Circuit race. I felt really good during this stage. I pushed the pace in the last lap, trying to get away and did so a couple of times. I was in a break in the final miles with one other rider, who was from Canada, but, we were caught with 1 kilometer to go.

Road Race--the queen stage of GMSR, and the hardest race I've done this year. There were 2 climbs on the course, a long climb in the middle and then the brutal Appalachian Gap at the end. Results from the stage and more from the rest of the season coming tommorrow.