Nationals Road Race - “How stupid are we!?!”

Personal Objectives of the Day:
1) Finish - complete
2) Have fun – complete


Two-for-two ain’t bad, right?  This is going to be super quick and not have a lot of photos for two reasons: 1)I’m pooped and 2) I was racing for 4 hours, so needless to say I didn’t get a whole lot of photos.


63rd out of 146+ starters.  Beating half the people ain’t bad, right? Right. So I may have completely destroted myself for tomorrow’s Crit, but I set out to finish the RR and I did.  Half of the D1 field DNFed – half.  Yeah, kinna silly.  But I don’t blame them, and here’s why: On top of it being a 72 mile course with 8,000 ft of climbing, it was 45 degrees F and raining the entire race.  Needless to say, everything about the day hurt.

Keeping it Tim.
photo credit: TJ Harron

The peloton on the first climb
photo credit: TJ Harron

Gregg (Northeastern) and I were together the whole race until the bitter (cold) end.  Way off the back by ourselves with one lap to go, we knew we were going to continue and finish despite the fact that the other dozen riders in our chase group pulled off and quite at the feed zone.  We took the left onto Ryan Road to be pelted in the face with acupuncture-like rain in the face and let out screams of “I immediately regret this decision!” and “I’ve made a huge mistake!”  The last lap we pondered important questions, like “how stupid are we?” for continuing the race and voluntarily putting ourselves through pain, cold, and rain.  Why? It’s Nationals, that’s why!  Four years ago, hell, ONE year ago we never thought we’d be here.  But we were both there, and we were sure as hell going to finish that race, all 72 mind-blowing miles of it.


Tomorrow holds a meeting or two and the crit.  Bottom line, we’re (all hundreds of us) happy it’s going to be sunny. 

My objectives/goals for tomorrow? – I’ll just keep those for myself.