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Baptism

For most riders the USPro National Criterium was just another race, albeit a significant one. For Jason Waddell of Jelly Belly it was a painful but satisfying initiation into the professional ranks.

I arrived in Chicago for my first pro race and the differences between being on a pro team and doing it myself are easily noticed. First off I didn't have to book my own travel, all I had to do was show up at the airport and get on the bird. The best was not having to deal with rental cars and hotels as I got off the plane and waited for my team manager to pick me up at curbside to take me to our host house for the weekend. Dinner is served at 6pm every evening and breakfast is laid out every morning and you just help yourself when you are ready. A guy could get used to this.

Saturday morning I went for a ride with my new team-mates and got to know some of them that I didn't already know. Damon Kluck is a good guy that likes to joke about just like myself. Mariano Friedrick (Olympian) is a great guy that was easy to talk to and get along with. I already knew Kirk Albers, Norm Carter, and Brian Forbes from racing. Jonathon and Brad are both 20 years old and talking and listening to them makes me realize that I am a long way removed from 20.

Saturday evening was a Pro 1/2 race that was supposed to be just a warm-up for the pros but someone forgot to pass the note. We were freaking flying on this course and I saw more crashes than I care to remember. Guys were inspecting the pavement on almost every lap and I didn't care to join them. In our team meeting before the race we were instructed not to take any risks or ride too hard as this race didn't really matter, but we were still expected to finish well. In other words, don't do anything stupid (crash) and still mix it up at the finish (ride hard). Yes I know, quite contradictory instructions.

We didn't do jack in the race until the end and Kirk helped take me to the front of the field on the last five laps (man that was nice having a lead out guy) and I braced for the worst as guys were taking stupid risks to get to the front. With one lap to go I was around 10th place and was just happy to be upright on my bike so I just stayed put. Going into the last turn the guys up front were really riding stupidly and they paid for it as between three and five guys did some pavement/barrier inspection up close and personal. I saw that they weren't going to make the turn so I dived to the inside as a bike went flying 15 feet into the air beside me… actually that was pretty neat looking. I ended up seventh for the night. One of our riders, Brian Forbes, crashed during the race and got skinned up pretty bad. Later that night he passed out in the hallway and had to be taken to the hospital for observation. I am happy to say that he is all right and out of the hospital.

Sunday. The day that I have been thinking about since November. I had planned on doing the amateur race, but plans changed and now I was in there with the big boys. We had eight guys in the race and at our team meeting over lunch it was decided that Damon and I were to save ourselves for the finish and the rest of the guys were to cover breaks and get us to the front for the finish. Well it worked perfectly for the first 30 of 62 laps, then it all went wrong.

When a break of 12 guys gets away and one team has four and two other teams have three in the break, that is a bad sign for the field. No one in the field wants to chase and the break slowly rides away. We had two guys in the break -- although Kirk and Jason McCartney are not renowned sprinters -- so our team did not have to chase. The break was holding the gap at 40-50 seconds for 15 laps and that is when Jason got dropped partly because he was one of the guys that had covered all the early breaks and then he still made this break. You only have so much energy. Bad news for us as we only had one guy in there now and we didn't have the guys or the horsepower to bring the breakaway back.

With seven laps to go the gap was down to 25 sec and I decided it was now or never. With six laps to go and four Saturn riders on the front of the field blocking, I went for it.

Oh Hell what have I done now, this freaking hurts.

Half a lap into my attack and here comes Mark McCormick (Saturn) and he won't help me, and then Michael Barry (Saturn) and Dave McCook (7up/Colorado Cyclist) also catch on as I go through the start/finish with five laps to go.

This really hurts now but luckily Mark, Michael, and Dave are helping. I've forgotten how hard Mark can pull, he almost dropped me when he pulled through right after me, but I'll be damned if I'm getting dropped now.

I gave it everything I had, which Mark didn't think was enough considering all the yelling he was doing, but with two laps to go we caught the break. This is normally the time when you recover slightly from a really hard effort, but two laps from the finish in a National Championship there's no time for that. My team manager Danny was screaming at me on the radio in my ear and as we went by the managers area to got on Kirk's wheel. Who's Kirk? Hell I can't even make out who is who. What state am I in? Did I just see Elvis?

I was in severe oxygen debt and I was supposed to win this race? I got up at 2:30 am Friday morning to go to work so that I could catch a 11:00am flight to this race and two days later I am supposed to win? Man this hurts. One lap to go and Kirk (I think) takes me to the front five guys and then waves me through his job being done, now it gets fun as guys are attacking and swerving all over the place and I still can't see very well. By this point my eyes were producing lactic acid. I gave it everything I had and ended up in tenth place out of 18 in the break. Without my team-mates chasing down early breaks and helping me to the front my tenth would not have been possible. Nothing to be ashamed of at all as I tried my best and got beat by better competitors, maybe next year…

I set three major goals that I wanted to achieve this year and they were:

1 Top 10 at BMC Austin: I got fifth - goal accomplished
2 Top 10 at Shelby, NC or Athens Twilight: I got tenth at Shelby, 15th at Athens - goal accomplished
3 Win Crit Nationals: I got top 10 :-)

Hell, two out of three ain't bad… I am completely happy with my tenth place at USPRO crit nationals, as I had a great race and gave it everything that I had and then some. Some people, even myself say that you always have more in you to push yourself that little bit more, but I was at my limit for the last 12 minutes of that race. I looked at my Heart rate monitor after the race and it showed that I spent the last 12 minutes of the race above 195. My Lactate Theshold (the point were your muscles don't clear the acid (burning sensation) anymore) is 181 and my max is 207, do you think that I was riding hard? I have never pushed myself that hard in a race before and it was not a fun experience, but I would do it again tomorrow if I had to!

Thanks to all that write with words of encouragement and congratulations.

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