Valley of the Sun
Just Squawking February 16th, 2008Suited up for my first ever go at Valley of the Sun yesterday. It is a great story and I will save it, but we almost didn’t make it to the race. Cody actually missed his start time, but Neil and I made it with about 4 minutes to spare. We suited up in the van and registered, threw the number on, GO! I can now say that warming up is definitely a necessity. I ran 20th Neil just a close 3rd on team G.C. The new guy, Ben Kneller stole the show with his fast time trialing skills and also his fashion.
I am not one to talk because I have no style, but we need a fashion liaison in cycling or something. I will post some pictures from the podium. Kneller up there wearing the sandals with white socks. If you got it, you got to flaunt it huh.
The road race was today. Neil and Cody rode the front all day and brought back a 16 man break that had over 2 minutes at one point. I was in the box a little bit toward the end. Tried to keep Ben up there in the jersey at the front. We still have the jersey but are in a tie on paper because of Bonus Sprints. It will be tough to hold onto. We will see what happens. More later and some good pics of our epic drive over the dirt road pass to avoid the closed interstate and sneak on past the blockade. We wouldn’t have made it if we didn’t sneak around.
February 17th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Just saw the results this morning and apparently Karl Bordine snagged 3rd place for some more bonus time! Bummer, so Ben no longer has the jersey. We will see what happens in the crit today.
February 17th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Hey shriver, what route was closed? we were getting dirty at 24 hours of ol pueb, and everyone had a tale about their trip down….
February 18th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Josh, Interstate 8 was closed only about 20 minutes into our drive near Alpine. Icy roads, we went around the blockade and up over a dirt road that we train on.
February 19th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Nice move….I don’t think anybody was expecting the weather to be that bad…gotta improvise!
Right on man, check the NMcycing.org calendar for NM racing, should be pretty good again this year. Might wanna check into the Hillsboro/Las Cruces Omnium, there’s actually some money to be won!