As I look over Steve and Jordan’s earlier posts, I can honestly say they have covered everything as far as racing/results go.

So to save all rad racing blog readers from the boredom that comes along with hearing about the same event, in the same way, over and over again, I am going to try to liven things up a bit. Here are my favorite moments that you may not have heard about from the 2008 Road National Championship in the OC.

- Traveling for the first time while wearing compression tights. Yes, they DO work… as for cutoff jeans, those DO NOT work…

- Meeting Danny, the driver for the hampton inn shuttle. He hooked us up with a quick ride to wherever we wanted to go multiple times during our stay there. He’s the man.

- Watching Jordan bridge up to the winning break on the last lap of the road race. I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief when I saw that go down.

- Watching Chris take care of business like the true director sportif he is at registration on the first night. Parents shmarents.

- Eating at Go Roma. Good prerace food for a manageable price. We all threw down pretty hard there two nights in a row. I didn’t know Steve could fit that much food in him…

- Grocery shopping with Eric. I swear he knows more about wholesome food than anybody I know. I think he is destined for culinary greatness.

- Seeing Jim and Chris Johns unexpectantly show up to watch the crit. Chris was looking just a tiny bit cooler than Jim as always. But barely.

- Visiting the beautiful Corona del Mar beach on our last day. David parallel parked the rad van. In California. At one of its most crowded beaches. On a Sunday. Enough said. 

- Watching Jordan struggle to unearth himself after we buried him at the beach. He would have been there the rest of his life if we hadn’t have given him a helping hand.

- Looking on as Ian C actually managed to find my broken glasses at the bottom of the pacific ocean. But that was only one of the cool things he did on this trip. He also took the manshift and drove the van from 1 am to 6 am to California.

- Going to see Pineapple Express on one of our days off between races. “It’s, It’s, It’s still waaarm.” I laughed the hardest I have at a movie in a long time.

- Catching up with Jeremy Ferguson AKA J Fergie.

- Kudos to whoever took the time to stuff a small tree into one of the elevators at the hotel. We all thought that was pretty funny…..

Thanks for reading.

Ian Terry

 

Well yes road nationals was quite some time ago, but it feels good to write about it now after some quality time off the bike.  So let me back it up to whatever day it was that we left.  I got to fly down with Ian Terry and Eric Emsky.  Ian and I were looking good as usual so it was a quality air travel experience all around.  I have some pictures, but the computer and I aren’t really getting along right now, so they will have to wait.  Are man Danny picked us up from the airport in his sweet hotel shuttle.  It was awesome getting to the hotel and having our bikes already there and still put together thanks to the crew that drove down!

We got for a ride almost right away and it felt good to spin the legs out.  The next day was the time trial, but I chose not to race it in anticipation of all of the qualifying heats for the road race and crit.  Wednesday was another day of riding out in the So-Cal heat.  We found a good trail along the dried up aqueduct thing that I was able to do some openers on.  They felt good and I was looking forward to the next day’s crit.

It took some hardcore research on the part of our staff, but eventually we determined that there wouldn’t be a crit heat the next morning.  So we got to sleep in nice and late again.  We got to the course nice and early and did our best to stay cool.  I got in a good warm up and previewed the course before.  I couldn’t say that I loved what I saw, but I was going to giv ‘er none the less.  I made sure to line up in the front and stayed up front to watch for a strong move.  I got into the first major move that was looking good with all of the major teams represented, but the wind and heat took its toll on us and we were brought back after a few laps.  We all tried our best to cover the strong moves for the rest of the race.  Going into the last lap I was sitting up near the front, but got swarmed in the next few corners.  So I was glad to have kept it upright, but it left me looking for more in the road race.

The next two days we just rested up and spun to get ready for the road race.  We pre-rode the course the day before and I like what I saw.  That 4:30am alarm came all to early on race day, but I was still excited to race.  The one good thing about a 7am start was the slightly cooler temperature.  I started in the front and I found myself clipped in fast so I just decided to pedal hard right away.  Only one other guy had the same idea, so there was the gap.  On the slight climb out to the first U-Turn five more guys bridged up and we had a very very strong group with the major teams represented.  We got the gap up to 1 minute pretty fast.  Things were pretty steady and we had more than a minute as we crossed the line with 1.5 laps to go.  On the climb up to the first U-Turn the field started closing the gap fast and soon caught us and when by all lined out.  I managed to get in and get to the front on the way down from the turn.  I was gassed after more than 2 laps off the front.  Ian and Eric were pretty toast too after covering all of the bridge attempts when I was up the road.  On the next small climb I was fading, but I soon came around on the gradual descent.  I was motoring up through the field and got both Ian and Jordan on my wheel.  As I towed them up to the front and right as we got there the field was sort of sitting up.  I sling-shotted Jordan off the front and he bridged up to the winning break with a couple of other guys.

Overall it was a great day that made a great week for the team because we worked so well together and made sure to get guys into all the right moves.  I’m glad that I can consider my last junior race such a great success!  Our staff was awesome all week and we couldn’t have done it without them!

-Steve

“Team building” during Director Chris’s team meeting. (notice the hand holding (interlaced fingers))