Monday, May 14, 2007

But I Was Just Getting Warmed up...

The good and bad of this weekend. Saturday we did a little opener ride at White Clay. the idea is to open the legs up before the race on Sunday. Chunky Monkey, led the group of, fatmarc, Matt run Forrest, Jan, John Williams, Levi, and myself, plus we were supposed to have FFA Amy, who forgot her bike, and Fitzy who went to the wrong lot.
Good ride with a couple of good efforts.

Sunday was French Creek. I have to admit I didn't have very high expectations, I was just looking for s good, fun training race. The Mighty Spot Brand Presented By Twin Six showed up in Style. I came up with the crazy combo of the Green Twin Six Buck Jersey and the pink Henrys shorts. Th fucked up part was Everybody was on board. Needless to say we looked good.
The course was awesome, plenty of climbing and plenty of fast technical descents. At the start I tried to take it easy, I now have the endurance mentality of pace yourself. Matt and Jamie were off the front. I thought that would be the last I saw of them. I tried to settle down but there was too much traffic so I was in stop and go mode. Then all of the sudden I spot Matt and Jamie, not only did I see them but I managed to catch them. That is until the long road climb. They rode steady and I felt like I was going to pop, so I backed off. I wasn't climbing my best but I was going down hill really well. I managed to catch up with Matt again on the hike-a-bike, but it wasn't for long.
I was still not feeling great but I was riding well. I rolled through on the first lap, and was starting to feel better. The first lap was 11 miles but the second was only 7, so I knew I was running out of time to catch more people. I was feeling better and better as the race went on. I hit the road climb for the second time and almost felt good. But that was about it for the race, it was basically down hill or flat from there. I was having a blast flying down hill, yelling at people to get out of my way, but it wasn't enough to catch Matt again.
In the end I came away with 8TH, Matt was 6TH, so It was a good day for us. The rest of the team had a good as well. Marc raced in his age group against the geared guys and got 10TH, and my man Fitzy found his way on to the podium in the Sport Single Speed class finishing 3RD.
This is no longer my kind of racing but it was a lot of fun, and hats off to Scott Wipperman and the Beans Boys for putting a a fantastic race.

Now is when it gets weird. When I got back to my car I saw I had a couple of voicemails. I tried to listen to them but phone signal up there is pretty bad, so I figured I would get them on the way home. While hanging out enjoying a beer and checking the results, my phone rang. It was my wife, I couldn't hear her that well, because she was breaking up but I got the jist of it. She wanted me to come home and take her to the hospital. I took off with out telling anyone why. See Rachael has been having some dizzy spells and headaches lately, but nothing to severe, but yesterday it had gotten much worse. I made the 45 minute drive hom from French Creek in a half an hour and we made our way to the hospital. I was amazed at how fast they were. Turns out she has Vertigo. They gave her some medicine that seems to have stopped the spins and black outs, but she is still feeling weird and out of it. We are hoping it goes away soon. She's is doing OK now, it's just the medicine makes her tired. It is a pretty frustrating condition. We will know more when she sees the doctor on Wednesday.

Cheers,
Buddy

4 comments:

van den kombs said...

hey buddy, sorry to hear about rachel's vertigo...must have been freaky for her. Hope it gets resolved asap.

Suki said...

glad your race went well...

really concerned about rachael, though :(

if they put her on promethazine (I'm sure they did)...that'll make her good and googly, though.

you might be able to coaxe all sorts of twisted things out of her (think shiny pants)...

better get on that, killer.

samantha said...

Rushing to the hospital SUCKS.

Make sure they check her ears on Wednesday. An ear infection can do that.

I hope she feels better very soon!

-Sam

team biketopia said...

I developed a touch of Vertigo from cracking my skull open. I was young enough that it healed mostly. One thing I can;t do is walk with my eyes closed I fall down or I get the spins. But I get the spins even when I don;t close my eyes and walk, maybe it's the homebrew or limoncello, ah.. it's all cool.
Congrats on the strong showing man, and +2 on the flaunting the 2 most polular colors of 2007 at the same time. That's Genius man.