Cat's Swill and Berkeley Kills

Yes! A really fun weekend of racing! Cat's Hill is one of my favorite races, I had a good time this year and came 9th in the big boys race. My teammate Christian Kearny was 8th, he was off in the chasing break and he did really well to hang in there and rip it. We all rode at the front once he was away, and I had a nice attack on the hill as Wolberg and Ben J-M lapped the group and I jumped on with them to get a good gap with 5 laps to go. The race was neutralized when a rider crashed badly on the descent in the main bunch.

I was told today that the crash occured because he wasn't holding on to his handlebars well enough and when he hit a bump he lost his grip. People, use your thumbs will you? None of this "I once saw a pro ride this way in the tour day france" bullshit where you just hang your hands over the bars or hold the shift cables either. It's STUPID. It will only end in tears. It never makes you faster so it's not worth doing.

Anyway, after a few laps of puttering along waiting for the carnage to be swept away, and watching Ben getting a beer feed from OV (hey, that's fucking BEER!) they did a really good job of restarting the race and I held on to my spot with no trouble for the coveted top 10 position. The beer must have worked because Ben won it pretty easily. If I'd felt talky and set a goal for myself before the race, top 10 is probably what I'd have wished for so I'm quite pleased.

Afterwards, we all had fun at the official Cat's Swill afterparty at Rob, Aaron and Shelly's house. Many heads were in attendance, it was sweet! Kegs, bbq, herb smoke wafting through the crowd, the whole deal. I wasn't able to stay for nearly long enough but I'm sure it got epic. I ended up bailing out pretty quickly after getting a burrito downtown so I could get ready for todays road race.

But today- Oh, god. I had a hard time getting everything organized and falling asleep last night, so when the alarm went off this am, I was not feeling too perky. I made it to the race, got my # pinned and got my bottles in the feed zone. I had pockets full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, waffles and gel flasks with honey/water mix since I didn't have any modern, prepackaged bike racing food at home. The race went off, and in like the first 3 minutes a breakaway group formed with my teammate Jesse/Andy Mendonca-donc in it. I was feeling none too snappy so I just sat on Wolbergs wheel to see how far he'd let it go. They got about 1:45 on us till Wolberg decides to go to the front and just put the hammer down. I stayed on over the first few climbs, but I popped off through the feed zone. Dang, sawed off on the first lap! Oh well, I got mine yesterday.

'Twas a good weekend, and I'm glad it's behind me! There will be plenty of sweet battle tales from this one, I've no doubt.