That Familiar Burn: It is snowing again...

Which means it is cold. It really should warm up, I am sick of wearing so many clothes for bike practice.
Anyhow, I have been on the move for quite some time now. It all started last Wednesday....

Wednesday noontime I jumped on a plane out to Salt Lake City to go to a job interview which was on Thursday. I went to that, and found out I was the youngest person at the interview (of 30). The interview went ok, the one part I should have done well at, I screwed up and forgot half of the things I was going to say. Nuts... I was glad to be done with the interview, and many of the others were too. That night just under half the interviewees went out to a bar/restaurant and had some fun. I stayed up later than I should have because I had to get up early and come home.
Taxi rides were expensive to the airport, so I went really early to split the cost with another guy who was there. Got to the airport at 4:30, found out my plane left at 7 instead of 6, slept on the floor. Slept on the plane, got delayed flying into Chicago, ran out of gas, refueled, got to Chicago 2 hours late, the new connecting plane was broken, so another 2 hour delay. All in all I spent 14 hours in airports or planes to get from Salt Lake to MSP. It took less than 4 to get there. Along the way I found out I did not get a job. So I wasted $500 and 2 days for pretty much nothing. And I am right back to where I was, jobless. So if you have any good jobs on hand lemme know.

We were planning on leaving Northfield at 3 to get down to Iowa City for bike racing, but due to airplanes we did not leave until 6:45. We got there eventually and I slept a few hours, and got up to go race bikes at 5:45.

Saturday Road Race.
A good sized collegiate field showed up for the Conf. Champs. and for the first 3 laps of the 65 mile race nothing really happened. It was really windy, and people were pretty fresh. I had to spend some time up front, because death cramps were on the verge of setting in, and the only way to get them out is to hammer. So I had to use my stiff legs up a little to not die. Oh well. At the end of the 3rd lap things started to happen. A group of 3 got up the road, and Sean and I lit it up and broke up the field, every few minutes the people with us would change. At one point there were 7 of us, Sean got up the road 40 meters with another guy, everyone around me was hurting a lot, so I put the hammer down and split the group again. A few minutes after that it was down to 3 of us in the break. For 1.5 laps we rode. After all my traveling and not riding bike I was feeling like crap. Stiff, tired, hungry, just not good for bike racing. Nevertheless I tried not to pay attention to how much I was hurting and rode. Soon it was time for the finish. I could tell Sean was feeling quite good, so I tried to go for an early jump on the sprint, either surprising him or catching him on some other mistake. I got a small gap, but I just did not have it and he came around a bit before the line. Oh well, for feeling like shit I did just fine. Afterall I did get the KOM jersey for keeps. It should be called the KOC (king of cornfields) instead.

Sunday:
Old Capitol Crit in downtown Iowa City. 40 laps of a fun course, go fast down, go fast up. Wahoo. The first 15 laps were not so good, I was not riding or feeling great. After that I started to figure things out and made my way up towards the front. With 2 laps to go Sean attacked with some others, I tried to attack and bridge, I had a small gap at first, the field got split and the stronger got to me, and we (I) pulled back Sean, he was angry. HA! The last lap was nice and fast, I took the inside (wrong side) of the last corner and got boxed in at the finish. I still made it in the money though.

More pictures to come as I get them.