The Otter Wrap Up.

Looking back now it was one fun weekend of racing. Definitely worth the forty hours of travel time out and back. Good weather, great people and some super quick racing. The final day was the circuit race, held on the famous Laguna Seca racing track. We had 30 laps of this bad boy so we got to know the 'cork screw' section pretty well, and man, was it rad. Talk about sudden elevation drop and increase in acceleration! The rest of the lap was pretty fun too, with some nice sweeping turns on super smooth tarmac. How'd I go? Well, okay I guess. 27th in the wash up, but not making the front split was a little disappointing, but then again I don't think I had the legs that perhaps I did in the crit. Basically the formula was every lap the bunch would stay together in the first part of the climb, leading into a false sense of security, until towards the top it was strung out and in the gutter single file hanging on for grim death. Any gaps that opened up were hard to bridge coming off the corkscrew. And when Levi got on the front and drilled the climb pretty much every lap...well you can imagine the outcome I'm sure.

So overall it was a great weekend. Staying right opposite the venue was great, not to mention our host family and their love of cooking. Pretty well matches up with cyclist's love of eating! And then there was the ping-pong challenges. Oh my. So I had a fair bit of pong time while I was teaching, things got pretty competitive down at the PE department and many a lunchtime was spent in the heat of battle with a wooden paddle. But try as I might I couldn't dethrone our host, with the closest I ever got being 18/21. Damn. Another thing that was a little rough is that we pinned the 19hr drive all the way back to CO on the Sunday morning. Having to drop Ian off for the airport shuttle at 4am, we figured we'd make a start then. Getting to the Junk by 8pm we pressed on. Needless to say the last few days have been a little fuzzy.

Cooking was a very precise task...luckily we had a good coach...

Next stop is Tour Of The Gila next week. This is going to be b-i-g. Crazy big. The start list is madness, and the rumours flying round that a certain 7 times TDF winner is going to be there are circulating all around the place. Time for some good rest this week before the onslaught...over n' out...cw

What can I say?

T-Dog Grill Master..

Much meat was consumed...thankfully post racing so no incidents of 'meat creep' were reported..