Portland USGP recap

Where to start........so far so good as far as my fitness goes. Today was a much different course than yesterday. Overnight the wind came up and destroyed much of the course and a fair number of tents. Wish I had a good picture of the Specialized trailer, their whole tent set-up was a mangled mess that was sitting on top of the trailer in the morning. It was much colder today and very windy all day. The course conditions were a weird mix, most of the course was hard and tacky but a few spots had moisture coming up that made them slick.

As for the race.......Got a great start and led going into the grass. This part of the course had a few long straightaways and one of them was into the wind so I slid into second behind a guy that was just flying. I felt like I could go pretty fast on the technical 2nd half of the course to took the lead and got a gap by the first time over the line. For most of the race I held a 10-15 second gap over 2nd place until I crashed in a slick off camber turn. This allowed the guy in 2nd to get close but as soon as I got going he bobbled and dropped his chain giving me a big lead going into the last lap. Going past the pit for the last lap Bill reminded me to back off the pace a bit and stay up and that's just what I did. 1st today and a 2nd yesterday feels pretty good and 2nd overall for the series is awesome.

Next it's off to Bend for Nationals but first we have a few days off. Tomorrow I hope to get out for a ride here in Portland where it's supposed to be around 30 degrees. I hear it's going to be in the teens with snow tomorrow in Bend. Sounds like we aren't the only ones thinking about hanging in Portland for a few days. The Cannondale crew and a few teams are thinking the same thing.

By the way, the KCCX crew is continuing to hang out with some cool photo journalists. In New Jersey in was Ben Ross, here it's Lyne Lamoureux from Podium Insight. She's staying at KB's house with us and it's pretty cool to see what she has to go through to cover a race. An added bonus is that we got to see all 600 pictures that she took just of Sundays races.

Ok, now I'm tired. Time to relax for a bit then off to bed.