Pace Bend Road Race

This weekend went better than planned and I cannot help but thank Charlie Tames, Todd Reed, Barry Lee, as well as the rest of the Team Hotel San Jose crew for standing behind me on my journey to come back to the sport fully fledged, like democracy taking its second wind in a third world country- coming back stronger.

I am planning on being stronger than I was before I “hung the bikes up” back in 2007 and have had plenty of time to find myself and mature a little bit, after having some fun here in college- I mean what else is it for…

I haven’t had much time to prepare for this race because I have been getting situated with my course work, tests recently, as well as balancing the rest of my life out, and I have finally set forth enough time to train so I can build myself back up to full potential. So before any rumors start to brew up I will report on this previous weekend’s Pace Bend Road Race.

Since this was my first race in over a year and a half I didn’t know what to expect, besides that it was going to be fast, hard, and not to mention- fast and hard, so my plan was to help out the team in the beginning and hang in there as long as I could, which was probably 2 laps at most.

Well the first lap rolls around and I am still hanging in there having a blast. Pace Bend is one of my favorite Texas race courses and ranks up there with Lago Vista, which is coming up this weekend. So the race was pretty much a speedy rollercoaster, and it was very exhilarating.

The race was 15 laps which equaled out to be 80 miles, so I wasn’t really expecting to finish it, with my longest ride of the whole year being around 60 miles back in January.

Everything was working out fine during the race, and since the course is so fast there wasn’t really any threatening breaks getting up the road so I just sat in and tried to hang on as long as I could by playing it smart.

My legs started feeling it in the hills around 6 laps to go. Then around 4 laps to go the hammer got dropped and it was pure chaos and animosity. There was no way I would be able to hang with that speed in my current shape so I got shelled off the back instantaneously. I had planned prior for this and if it were to happen I would just keep riding to get extra miles in for training. I ended up rolling around for two more laps by myself until I got pulled with the pack’s 1 lap to go. All in all I got roughly 70 miles in, so it was pretty good for my first race back on the bike.

People may start to think that I am not thinking too positively about my early results, but trust me I am. I am very glad with my results and would like to thank all of my supporters out there. There are a quite few antagonists, but I won’t get into that, because they push me harder.