Vegas Cross-DSJ vs Lance

I have to honesty say that I never thought that would be a title of a blog post, for me.
It's kind of like Vegas never happened, so surreal. Cycling has brought me alot of places, allowed me to experience amazing things, but I think this tops it. You can win a race, you can have a good ride, but really when do you ever...and I say ever get to put the hurt on Lance Armstrong. Granted he's not a Cross racer, I'll give him that but he looked fit,not ultra ripped or anything, but not slouchy either.

So Cross Vegas was the place. 15000 people, poured onto the reservoir bowl to watch this race that was light up, true Vegas style. The place reeked of booze and there was more silicone and fake and bake in the VIP section can you can ever imagine.

I had a fair call up spot since I busted my butt last year getting UCI points. The race obviously started off fast. Finally I found myself with a descent start...not stellar, but much better. I was just a little too far back to make the first group and ended up being in the second group, with none other than Lance Armstrong.

Strangely there were more people cheering for Lance than for me,not really really sure why.
Funny was how they were telling us to "bridge" up to the leading group. Not sure if you've ever tried to pull back 30 seconds from a group of 15 with Ryan Trebone,Geoff Kabush, Johnathan Page and Tim Johnson it's not that easy.

Just as we were actually maintaning a descent gap to the leaders, Lance crashed in front of me and almost took me out. Strangely enough I don't know how he wasn't bleeding cause he ate sh%t on the pavement.

Anyways, once that happened all hopes of catching on were completely exhausted, so I figured I would just ride as hard as I could for as long as I could and hope to come around straglers from the lead group later in the race.

So I spent an hour in front of Lance, in back of Lance, beside Lance and one time even had to chop him to get on a wheel.

We had a good size group going, I couldn't get a hold of any file tread tubulars before Vegas, so both Tasha and I were rolling on Vittoria clincher file treads. Not bad, but not great, I ran em at about 33 psi or so, but needed just a bit more as I fold em a couple times into the corners and thought I was going to also eat sh$t. There were a couple of sections that I had to slow down where I kept folding the tires, so I yo-yoed at eh back of our group for a while, but managed to dig really deep and pass a couple of the guys with a lap to go and got a better place in the group.

You got all these people, crazy loud, chaos, going mental for Lance...calling him Lance, Johnny, all kinds of things...and I'm thinking, I'm gonna beat this guy. So I punched it into the final barriers and ran hard up the hill, really punched it around the tight turns and took risks some corners and sprinted so hard down the final shoot that I thought I was going to die after the race.

There were about 22 times in the race in which I thought, "oh my GOD, this is so hard, why do I do this to myself on a full time basis..." But I know that's what this sport is about , if you don't think that your not going hard enough.

So long story, I could go on for ever about it, my result was descent, as last year I wasn't making money at the big races like this, so there's an improvement,but I need to do even better, and I expect more out of myself. It's a good start but there is a lot of work to be done.

The whole Lance thing though...punching it through the corners like that and dropping him...probably the coolest thing Cross wise that's for sure. It keeps on playing over in my head.
Best part...I know exactly how many watts it took to do it...no I don't...it just took as many as I could make.

Ok, I'm done talking about it...for now. Ten bucks says at some point this year, Tasha is going to freak out and say "enough about Lance I've heard this story a thousand times, get over it, you beat him, get on with your life". I'll just smile...cause I still beat Lance! Nananabooboo(picture me jumping up and down, and running around like a squirel gathering nuts before a winter storm).

It's amazing what 1 large coffee and 1 can of Rockstar can make you do. Maybe the stuff here in the US is more potent.

DSJ

Oh yah, we are in Wisonsin, with yet another wicked host housing family, the Pingles. They have the cutest kids and a jumpy little dog. We are racing tomorow and Sunday.

Just for the record, I hope Lance is clean...cause I beat him. If he is on something, he should ask for his money back. No seriously he is clean, cause he was hurting big time. He told me so he said "man your a beast DSJ"...ok that part isn't true...but I had to embellish the stroy a little.