Salt Creek Bike Game

Saturday many biker gamers in a rainbow of colored jerseys traveled to the Tulsa bike course for a bike game. That's my tribute to the Bike Game.com. Salt Creek Circuit race was race #2,3,& 4 of my season. Yes you counted that right I raced 3x. A hard day for a hard man. The OG & I were the only OCC reps. OG had a rough day finding its hard to race on 3hrs sleep unless your me. He was sporting some flash new Sidi road shoes though.




Springfield was well represented. BMC North had Cale M, Super G Cone, & Emro. No Skip, but that was to be expected as the race was outside. For Mercy Missouri's # 1 Greeker made a showing along with Stay Bertsch, who won the women's, & Melissa rode well in support. TIAA-Creff Superstar Charles Bradley Huff showed up to break legs pre-euro style. Though he only finished 2nd in the 1/2/3? I think there was a little race fixing going on there but I'll have to ask Wayne's wife how that works.

My day started early with the Master's race. OKC, Tulsawheelman, & BMC against me. I felt very watched. I was unable to get in the 4 man break but ended up 3rd in the field sprint for 7th(? out of 30) in the race. Then a quick 1.5 hr rest & I was back on the bike for the 3/4 race. Once again felt rather outmanned. Did try a solo break to no avail. Came ever so close to bridging a 30 sec gap to the winning break. But had a retard moment. The peleton got within 10 sec of me & I was 10 sec form the break & I thought the break had sat up so I did too. Oops! As soon as they caught me they all sat up to let the OKC/Tulsawheelman break stay off the front. Lesson learned; wait to be caught in the break not solo. Ended up about 12th or so after the field sprint.After a 30 min cool down /warmup it was time for the 1/2/3 race. After the first lap I was wondering what the F was I thinking racing 3 races for 99mile if I finished them all? Finishing became the main focus after the pace kept jumping up to 33+MPH. Ouch! Did everyone not realize I'd raced twice already? I now know courtesy of Huff when you jump off to bridge up to a break you start from the VERY back of the group & let out a loud "YEEEHHAAA" as you scream past everyone to bridge up in nothing flat. F'ing show off! Stole my plan, I was just about to do the same thing. Anyway breaks went, the field shattered. The right combo got up the road, the field shut down. The break lapped us & we got pulled with 3 laps to go. OOPS. Who the hell gets pulled in a circuit race? Not the stunning Cat 2 debut the BMC boys were looking for.

Cone boy caused a little mayhem in the field though. He's not a popular boy in Tulsa. He was pulling into the wind & I was screwing with him a little refusing to get off his wheel. So he rode over to a cone & swerved @ the last minute. Now I knew it was there & swerved to & started laughing. Well no one else thought it was funny & A LOT of jawing ensued. Even a 90 lbs JR. was lecturing him. The whole time Jim & I were laughing our asses off. We had to salvage something out of a crap performance. Oh well.

So I ended up with 90 race miles in my legs. Legs stayed strong the whole way & I was even able to try & bridge(unsuccessfully) in the 1/2/3 race. This AM only my back is a little sore. So I'm guessing my form is coming along although slowly. Next weekend is an off weekend for racing before a triple race weekend. Have some work to do this week as a few glaring problems showed up in the races with my fitness.