*please note, names have been changed for the purpose of this blog. exposing their real names might slightly embarass them.*
Ever felt like you were going to die? This past weekend at the Roswell crit left me with that feeling. I'll start this story off with the first day of the weekend, Saturday at the Athens Twilight. PBnJ and i drove up to spectate the twilight. Something i have never actually done. In the past i've always gone up to race the fat tire crit. and stuck around to watch. Which is a shit load of fun. Anyways, PBnJ was lined up to assisst the cheerwine girls with some wrenching, i ended up helping out a bit with that as well before the night was over. Fixed up a few bikes for the young ladies of cheerwine and went right to the baracades. The crowds were amazing as always. If you've never been to athens for the twilight, this is how it plays out for the most part. You take a small college town with tons of bars, take one of the largest pro crit fields in the country, and lots of dumb, drunk frat kids and you've got the athens twilight. It's a site to see, let me tell you. In defense of those kids, they know how to cheer. They'll yell their damn lungs out that's for sure.
The women's race was pretty aggressive. Some local girls did it pretty big which was cool to see.
The men's race was insane. This is the fastest crit in the country hands down. Watching it is nuts. If you sit there and stare you'll become sick very quickly. Very cool. After the race PBnJ decided to hit up some bars, i wasn't to up on this b/c i wanted to race the next morning at Roswell. After our rounds of pickafatchickup i decided at 2am it would be a good time to drive the hour and some odd minutes back home to atlanta. Being the only sober person in our group the responsibility of driving was on me. My friend PeLow and i got back to my apartment at 4am. Coughing the majority of the night i might of gotten 3/4 hours of sleep, maybe.
I arrived in Roswell and talked with the local USCF officials about some problems over my license. Apparently when the uci sent me my license all my points as a 4 disappeared? After solving that issue so i didn't have to do the 5's race, i went back to my car and started to warm up on the trainer. For whatever reason it didn't take long to get my legs going. Figured on the amount of sleep i've had and my allergies acting up biiiiiiiiig time it would take quite a bit of time to get rollin. Since i've never done this crit i got off the trainer and took the time to do a few laps and figure out what was up. The biggest thing i saw was the long straight away from the final corner. My last warm up lap i took my long sleeve jersey off and rolled over to the neutral pit to hand it off. By the time i turned around the entire 3/4's field had managed to line up. Awesome, last row start on an 80 deep field in a crit.
"GO!!!!!!" signaled what would be the longest 40 minutes of my life. I weaseled my way through the field little by little. Discovered that 3/4's don't know how to corner at all very quickly. The smell of brake pads is a sweet scent. It didn't take long before a massive pile up happened in turn 1. Somehow someone's bike flew out from the pit and drilled my back wheel. Thankfully i didn't go down, but a big ass gap opened up. Since i didn't go down for whatever reason in my head the freelap rule at that point in time didn't occur to me. I tried jumping back onto the field quickly realizing "YOU IDIOT!!!" sat up immediately and rolled over to the pits. The exit from the pits was insane. Stand still to 30+mph is awesome. I jumped on about 3/4's mark of the field and tried to regather myself. This is sadly where things started to go downhill for me. At this point in the race we were left with about 6 laps to go. My body started to rebell against me big time. All of my allergies that sprang up this past friday took over. I started having coughing fits. One hard cough, the type of cough where you are trying extremely hard to clear out the flem from your lungs, would occur. After the first one a series of 5-8 hard coughs like the first would happen. This happened a few times and the last time it happened it triggered my gag reflexes and i threw up quite hard. I was having a hard time controlling this so i pulled out under 5 laps to go and sat in the neutral pit area. Just sitting there the coughing fits continued, the extremely alert EMT crew saw me having the fits and came over to offer some assistance. Felt kinda odd having them take my pulse over a coughing fit and asking me a string of questions and even wanting to put me in the ambulance for a bit of time. I declined but kept them in eye site b/c i felt like complete crap.
Since then my allergies have cleared up and my lungs feel fairly good. Sunday was just odd. Yet another crit weekend blown.
Ever felt like you were going to die? This past weekend at the Roswell crit left me with that feeling. I'll start this story off with the first day of the weekend, Saturday at the Athens Twilight. PBnJ and i drove up to spectate the twilight. Something i have never actually done. In the past i've always gone up to race the fat tire crit. and stuck around to watch. Which is a shit load of fun. Anyways, PBnJ was lined up to assisst the cheerwine girls with some wrenching, i ended up helping out a bit with that as well before the night was over. Fixed up a few bikes for the young ladies of cheerwine and went right to the baracades. The crowds were amazing as always. If you've never been to athens for the twilight, this is how it plays out for the most part. You take a small college town with tons of bars, take one of the largest pro crit fields in the country, and lots of dumb, drunk frat kids and you've got the athens twilight. It's a site to see, let me tell you. In defense of those kids, they know how to cheer. They'll yell their damn lungs out that's for sure.
The women's race was pretty aggressive. Some local girls did it pretty big which was cool to see.
The men's race was insane. This is the fastest crit in the country hands down. Watching it is nuts. If you sit there and stare you'll become sick very quickly. Very cool. After the race PBnJ decided to hit up some bars, i wasn't to up on this b/c i wanted to race the next morning at Roswell. After our rounds of pickafatchickup i decided at 2am it would be a good time to drive the hour and some odd minutes back home to atlanta. Being the only sober person in our group the responsibility of driving was on me. My friend PeLow and i got back to my apartment at 4am. Coughing the majority of the night i might of gotten 3/4 hours of sleep, maybe.
I arrived in Roswell and talked with the local USCF officials about some problems over my license. Apparently when the uci sent me my license all my points as a 4 disappeared? After solving that issue so i didn't have to do the 5's race, i went back to my car and started to warm up on the trainer. For whatever reason it didn't take long to get my legs going. Figured on the amount of sleep i've had and my allergies acting up biiiiiiiiig time it would take quite a bit of time to get rollin. Since i've never done this crit i got off the trainer and took the time to do a few laps and figure out what was up. The biggest thing i saw was the long straight away from the final corner. My last warm up lap i took my long sleeve jersey off and rolled over to the neutral pit to hand it off. By the time i turned around the entire 3/4's field had managed to line up. Awesome, last row start on an 80 deep field in a crit.
"GO!!!!!!" signaled what would be the longest 40 minutes of my life. I weaseled my way through the field little by little. Discovered that 3/4's don't know how to corner at all very quickly. The smell of brake pads is a sweet scent. It didn't take long before a massive pile up happened in turn 1. Somehow someone's bike flew out from the pit and drilled my back wheel. Thankfully i didn't go down, but a big ass gap opened up. Since i didn't go down for whatever reason in my head the freelap rule at that point in time didn't occur to me. I tried jumping back onto the field quickly realizing "YOU IDIOT!!!" sat up immediately and rolled over to the pits. The exit from the pits was insane. Stand still to 30+mph is awesome. I jumped on about 3/4's mark of the field and tried to regather myself. This is sadly where things started to go downhill for me. At this point in the race we were left with about 6 laps to go. My body started to rebell against me big time. All of my allergies that sprang up this past friday took over. I started having coughing fits. One hard cough, the type of cough where you are trying extremely hard to clear out the flem from your lungs, would occur. After the first one a series of 5-8 hard coughs like the first would happen. This happened a few times and the last time it happened it triggered my gag reflexes and i threw up quite hard. I was having a hard time controlling this so i pulled out under 5 laps to go and sat in the neutral pit area. Just sitting there the coughing fits continued, the extremely alert EMT crew saw me having the fits and came over to offer some assistance. Felt kinda odd having them take my pulse over a coughing fit and asking me a string of questions and even wanting to put me in the ambulance for a bit of time. I declined but kept them in eye site b/c i felt like complete crap.
Since then my allergies have cleared up and my lungs feel fairly good. Sunday was just odd. Yet another crit weekend blown.
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