North River Racing again had a team participating in the TTT. The team consisted of strong man Allen Kraft, Gary Watts, Ronny Brigham and myself, Jon Kraft. The forecast had called for dry weather, but that was not to be. Gary remained optimistic until the very end when a deluge of rain darn near collapsed our canopy that we were warming up under. To make matters worse, my cat had pissed on my skinsuit and I was not happy about the odor. Nobody complained. I think they were just keeping me from blowing my cork. As we sat there warming up the blue skies appeared and the roads started to dry up. Could the cycling Gods be on our side? No! Just 20 minutes before our start the skies opened up and let loose. The hardest downpour of the entire day. The call went out to skip the event as we huddled. We were there, we trained for this event, and we were not going to let the weather dictate our participation. Okay truth be told it stopped raining just minutes before our start otherwise we would all have been drinking coffee and eating lunch earlier than planned. After an hour’s warm up on the trainers we rolled out to the start line. By the time we reached the start our shoes were soaked and our core temperatures had dropped. Allen and I sat there shaking and shivering as they counted down to our start. We went with our practice line up which was Gary, Ronny, myself and Allen. I think I drew the short straw as Ronny doesn’t give much of a draft, then again neither does Allen so I will stop complaining. We took each corner as if it were ice. This didn’t help our time at all but we all stayed upright! On the first of 4 laps we reached the backside of the course and the roads were completely dry as we cruised at 27mph. Maybe we can do this we thought. Lap 2 was much the same but a bit slower as the wind started to increase. Lap 3, well that just sucked, as another front moved in and the temperature dropped and then the hail started. Yeah hail! Then rain and wind all the way to the finish. I couldn’t see anything but the road. We gave it the final heave-ho to the line and crossed the finish line at 34mph. We had hoped to average 26mph but again the weather was miserable and we averaged 25.4. Good enough for 3rd place. So again NRR brought home a medal in the TTT. It’s tradition!!! Special thanks to Gary’s wife, Carol who pinned us, shot photos and cheered us on.

Okay, apparently someone (Joe H.) reads these and wants to know what happened. So, here’s a brief run through on the last 3 races I’ve done…

King’s Valley - I raced the 4/5 race here and it was windy. There were 70 guys signed up, so I made sure I got to the start line early. I wanted to be at the front in case any good looking moves went off the front. It was a fun/hard race. Three guys from Team BikeTires Direct drove the pace pretty well from the start. I think a third of the pack was dropped on this first lap. On the second lap several guys tried fliers, but nothing looked good and nothing stuck for very long. We hit a long, flat crosswind section and the pace ramped up. I kept expecting the rubber band to break somewhere behind me, but it didn’t. We rounded a 90 degree turn and had a tail wind. I looked back and there was a single file line as far as I could see. It was a pretty hard pace at this point and I imagine we lost quite a few more guys from the pack. When we hit the hills near the beginning of the third lap, my legs were starting to feel crampy and fatigued. I knew I wouldn’t have anything left for the uphill finish (which I suck at anyway…see previous reports) so when a guy went off solo and got a pretty good gap, I figured I’d help bring him back. We were in the crosswind section and about 6 of us worked a rotating echelon to pull him back. It took a while, but we eventually got him. I was pretty much toast though. We hit the final 1k to the finish and there were maybe 30 guys left in the main pack. There was a small acceleration that I was able to hold onto, but about 500m out, the skinny guys dropped the hammer for real. I was left behind like a…. hmm… slow thing… and managed to gimp my way in for 22nd. I later discovered that a new Mari’s rider (Kyle) did this as his first race and he took 7th. What a brutal first race and a most excellent finish for it.

HR - 4/5 - So, I’ll only cover the 4/5 races as the 3/4 races were just training (and I didn’t place very well..)  These races are only 25 minutes long, so there isn’t a lot to talk about. They changed the course a bit from the first week and we now had a ‘T’ where we need to make a right hand turn onto a narrow road. If you go wide, you hit a big mud puddle, if you wider than that, you go down a big ditch to the barbed wire fence waiting below. So, note to self, don’t go wide…. We basically went in circles together until they threw a prime in with 3 laps to go. Only three of us went for it and I ended up third… damn… One of the guys was someone I knew and when we looked back we had a hundred yards on the rest of the race. We looked at eachother and said, “Let’s go!!”. So, off we went. Unfortunately, the third guy didn’t get the memo and he just sat on our wheels while we took turns pulling. Both Matthew and I “encouraged” him to help, but he just looked at us…. So, after a lap of this, we just sat up. My plan was to go hard coming out of the ‘T’ corner, but I wasn’t in a very good spot, so I just sat on. The guy who won the first race took off and I went after him. He was too far out for me to catch and eventually the guy who took second passed me. I managed to hold off another guy to take 3rd.

When I got to the last HR crit, I found out I was in third place for the 4/5 series. There was no way I could move up to first, but if I won I could take second. I also had to keep an eye out for the guy in 5th as he could move ahead of me if he finished more than 2 places ahead of me… This was a race of marking and being marked… All 4 of us just kept an eye on eachother. One interesting thing was that the race was 11 laps long and they had 7 primes.. I guess they had a lot of Gu to get rid of… That sure made for a surgey (is that a word?) race…. With 2 laps to go, a guy who wasn’t in contention, rolled off the front and no one went after him. I actually didn’t see him go an found out he won after the race was over. The race pretty much broke loose as soon as we rounded the last corner headed towards the finish. The guy in 5th overall caught me right at the line for fourth and he almost took third. In fact, we all thought he did until we came back around and Candi showed us the tape. The three of us were separated by less than half a wheel. I ended up 5th in the race and third in the series, walking away with a brown paper back filled with 10 Gu shots….