The "Silver Flash" was born on February 21st, 2009 at 11:30 am. The NC State Road Race # 2 was at 12:00 pm just 30 minutes later. I had enough time to get dressed and roll around for 15-20 minutes before the start of the race. Usually in road races you can get by with no warm-up, but this race was an exception. Starting from mile one the race was fast. I went into the red zone a couple times attacking and trying to get into the winning break, which made me feel very nauseous. I felt bad the whole race, and riding a brand new bike, which I did not have time to adjust properly, made it even worse. Oh well, I have nobody to blame but myself.
The next day I re-adjusted by bike and felt alot better. The WFU crit on Sunday was at Dixie Fairgrounds, where the wind was insane. Warming up on the rollers was almost impossible and I made a complete A-hole of myself falling over a few times. Just like the road race, the crit was fast from the beginning, but I was ready this time. There was a crash about 7 minutes in involving my teammate Reid Beloni and a Pfieffer rider. Both cracked their forks. I was to the left of it and had to slow down to get around it. When I looked up at the 10 riders in front of me, they were taking advantage of the crash and putting the hammer down! I managed to get back to the group and was the only VT rider left in the race. Or so I thought. Tim came out of nowhere a lap later and caught on and now we had two out of about 12. One pfieffer rider took off and ended up lapping the field. Tim got away with Turner Johnson, and they almost lapped the field as well. Tim ended up finishing 3rd, and I placed 3rd in the field sprint finishing 6th overall. I had the perfect leadout for the sprint and was the only rider to have a clear shot up the non-wind side, so in theory I should have walked away with that race. But my sprint sucked.... I need to practice that.
Although I had a bad intial ride on my new bike, the bike is actually awesome. It's an Alan, a hand-made brand from Italy- an aluminum frame with carbon stays and fork/steering tube. The bike is huge and it only runs 18.4 pounds. I got this frame and group set dirt cheap from Stratton Delony. He runs a bike shop called Keirin Culture based out of Roanoke. If you ever go by there stop and check it out. He has done alot in sponsering the VT cycling team.
Bike Number 2:
No I did not get a new Trek time trial bike with comic carbones. This bike is my dad's and he is allowing me to use it for the colligiate season. Hopefully I can make it to go fast this weekend at the Navy TT.
That's all for now, I am going to go rebel and mix some toppers with some hybrids.
-JZ
2 comments:
you finally rid yourself of the beast-a-roni that you have put oh so much love into. this is a sick looking bike. i remember vince had a bike that he got in le-belge and whenever he brought it home to the US, he simply told everyone that all the belgians rode that brand. what kind was it again? some weird ones, though.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamtedking/2608366061/in/photostream/
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