Hey guys,

Here's how the weekend went down:

      Reading Pagoda Individual Time Trial, Mar 8
          Men's C (58 starters)
               10th Erik da Silva
               20th Joe Kopena

           Men's D (29 starters)
               9th Regi Endriukaitis
               16th Jason Hall
               21st Stephen Breese
               27th Marc Maraldo

      Nittany Classic Pagoda Cicruit Race, Mar 9
          Men's C (67 starters)
               12th Erik da Silva
               26th Adam Alper
               DNF Joe Kopena (mechanical)

           Men's D (35 starters)
               8th Regi Endriukaitis
               15th Jason Hall
               21st Justin Kline

     The traditional Rodale circuit race was cancelled because the course was iced over. Instead an ITT was held on the Pagoda, basically down the main stretch, then halfway down the back side and back. Four miles round trip.

     Full results are up at [1] and [2]. It was a pretty good weekend, all in all. Justin, Jay, and Regi all made it to their races this weekend with good results, especially on Regi's part. Erik had a good weekend, considering the first thing he said after meeting up with us on Saturday was "Hey, I actually did some training this week!" Adam finished well, but was clearly pretty wiped out from crew practice during the week. I had a great Sunday going right up until a nasty piece of rock shaped like a shark tooth found my rear tire. But, it was a solid weekend all around.

     - Travelling

     We made a hideous amount of U-turns on Saturday. I blame Jay. I lost count, but it easily broke all previous records. We never got lost, but missed lots of turns. Those stupid people that you see doing all sorts of dumb things on the Schuykill, like backing up to exits? Yeah, that's us. Megan was ready to kill us after we nearly got them killed by diving into an exit at the last moment. The worst part was that Justin didn't make any mistakes on Sunday on the way to the race and made us look utterly ridiculous.

     Saturday night we stayed at the Place family home. It's way out in the boondocks, but man is it gorgeous out there. Lots of neat places to ride it looks like. It was really cool of Steve to let us crash his place, and it was fun. Except for the pet dander nearly killing Jay and I. It was also cool to hang out and cook dinner there, have a little team dinner.

     - Food

     Coming back on Sunday we were all starving and went out looking for food on our way back. Eventually we wound up at this Italian bar/restaurant that from the outside looked like it was halfway to being a dive. Entering through the bar, I couldn't tell. It seemed nice but it had a bar and an odd smell, so we stayed. However, I knew we were in trouble as soon as the waiter started to seat us. As soon as he headed out of that room and back through the restaurant, I knew we were in trouble. We wound up in this fairly nice room and I just sat there looking at the room, then looking at us.

     At this point Jay and Justin were still in full spandex. Justin just always looks like he's got mud all over him because it's stained into his shirt. Jay.... The English language cannot describe how outlandish Jay looked once we left the race. Full tights and jersey on topped off with a black bandana and his pretty aggressive blue Rudy glasses. He looked like some 21st century pirate in tights. And here we were, sitting in this nice room, amidst people wearing suits and relatively nice kit. Fortunately, everyone mostly decided to ignore us. Even as a loud conversation was carried on about the quality of the port-a-johns at the race, and even as Justin got up, rushed to the bathroom to deal with a whole glop of snot and, finding it locked with Regi inside, audibly proclaimed for the whole restaurant to here "Regi, lemme in, I gotta deal with something..."

     - Racing

     One really nice thing about Sunday was that we got there really early and had plenty of time to warm up, stretch, sneak into the woods a handful of times, etc. That's something we really have to work on doing evey race.

     Another thing is just working on the girls' observation skills. For the few laps I was in the race, I didn't get any cheers! They said afterwards that hadn't seen me at all. I have to admit to being slightly miffed that they hadn't been watching for us among the handful of leaders coming up the hill each lap.

     One really notable thing from my race was this move this one guy did. The course has this largish hill up to the start line, then a straight shallow descent for a mile or so. On the one lap these two guys from Princeton and I were the first ones coming up the hill. I tucked in behind one of them (it later turned out that he had won the Saturday ITT) and just stuck there, refusing to come ahead. Sort of a shabby move, but I didn't feel compelled to do much because we weren't making a break on the group as much as waiting for them to catch up and he had a buddy there, so I just kept zigging around with him. After a little bit of this, he just dove way across the yellow line to the other side of the road. It was completely unexpected and I don't know how he got so far across laterally before I could react. Regardless, there wasn't much I could do so I just had to smile and pull into the lead. Kind of pissed at being made to do so, I took off a bit to force them to catch up. After all this screwin' around we were fairly far ahead and the other guy started talking about making a break for it, but it didn't take much looking at the pack to see they were semi-organized and we didn't have a chance on the descent so I talked him out of it. It was the right move because they came up pretty fast right after that (with da Silva in the lead, then finally pulling ahead with this sort of look back like "why are you guys going so slow???").

     Soon after that excitement I got that faint rumbling noise and extra slop in the bike that signalled the end of my day. It was frustrating but after disappointing results on Saturday and last week, it just felt good to be fast and be with the lead for a even a few laps. It took a while for that high to settle down and me to get upset that I wouldn't get to find out how I'd hold up the rest of the race. But, on the upside, I did get to yell at Erik for going too slow on the final climb as the broom wagon I had finally gotten to pick me up passed him by.

     On a final note, somebody should have a little talk with Mr. Kline about his carbo-loading technique. Something along the lines of "Pasta might work better than a bunch of Guiness." That 21st place finish apparently came at the cost of most of his breakfast after the race...

[1] http://eccc-info.com/2003/psu_itt_results.html
[2] http://eccc-info.com/2003/psu_rr_results.html