Chris Winn: Ramblings From The Road

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03 April 2010

Super Saturday.

Chuck Norris has arrived in one piece and it's been a pretty fast and furious introduction for the man, with some tough racing this weekend combined with adapting to the time change and the altitude.  Been there a couple of times now and it's not a fun game at all.  Gotta say it's been awesome to catch up with the bloke and get up to speed with all the news from back home. Plus he's giving me a new excuse to increase the weekly burrito consumption.....

Twas a solid day today, heading out to Golden in the early morn for the Lookout Mtn Hill Climb TT.  The climb is pretty local for me, and almost has the same sentimentality as the old 1:20 back home.  Train on it heaps and know it well so I was kinda pumped to race up it.  Plus it was the first time on the new Reynolds since having them sitting there and begging to be raced during winter.  I would have to say that using the term 'windy' is a massive understatement.  All day it was blowing a friggin' hurricane, and being a lighter fella it's something I don't get real excited about being tossed around like a rag doll.  Still waiting on the final results - Tom Danielson said on his Twitter he punched out 400W average for the efforts so I'm pretty sure I was nowhere near that.....pretty sure!

Back up in the afternoon for the famous Koppenburg road race.  Haven't done this one before but certinaly has a little local legend status too it, featuring a short 5mile loop with a 17% rutted out dirt climb.  Norris and I pre rode it yesterday and I'm glad we did.  Lines were limited with some nasty deep ruts and soft sandy dirt.  Start line was well stacked with everyone back from Redlands with JD being out there representing in his new Bahati Foundation threads amongst a few others to watch including Brad and a gaggle of strong Garmin U23 guys.  Gotta love CO racing......

 First lap madness...I ended up taking the fence-line route...little tougher but avoided the cluster that was....and I got to keep my shoes clean!

Aussie power!

First couple of laps was hot....waaaay hot.  I was in the hurt box big time and quickly started to question doing the mornings TT.  The wind was pretty horrendous and there was more than one brown shorts moment on the gravel roads and random front wheel stealing cross winds.  Suffering hard is all I remember, but choosing some good lines up the main climb meant that the feet never touched the ground which was a big advantage as things blew apart super quick.  In the end I found myself in a small group with team-mate Gray, couple of VC guys and HTSJ's Sully..always great to suffer with another Aussie distracting ourselves with some 12th man quotes.  Once again no idea of results in the end...JD took out the big W and first Rio'er home was Garcia in 6th place.  Enjoy the videos...time for a burrito!
 






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