Back to Oregon for some crazy bananas

all that really needs to be said about Sunday
photo courtesy of Oregon Cycling Action

After spending the past few weeks racing up in Washington we brought it back south to race the third Banana Belt, which just happened to be the first race in the Oregon Cup series.  We didn't really have any plans for either series, we were just there to race as a team and see what we could come away with.

The plan was simple, keep the race together for the first two (of seven) laps and then start putting people up the road.  Kolben, Eli and I covered the early moves which essentially turned into a group ride.  I'm not sure if it was the presence of 8 Team Oregon riders in a 33 rider field or just the favorites marking each other.

Mason Lake: Round II

This post will be a little short and you'll see why in a minute.

My race yesterday can best be described as this:  you need to have bad days in order to have good days.  As you can guess, it wasn't a good day.  I'm not going to dwell on the negative or make excuses.  I knew where I was physically and mentally and I knew what I could and couldn't do.  It's been a long time since I didn't listen to my body but I did exactly that yesterday.  I ignored all the little warning signs.

Took a trip up north to Mason Lake

Instead of riding in aimless circles around Hagg Lake this past weekend five of us hopped in the van and headed up north to ride in aimless, faster circles around Mason Lake.


And ride we did.  As with any race there are always attacks.  For example's sake let's just say that the field is represented as a block of concrete and each attack is a hammer hitting the concrete.  Hit the concrete enough and something will eventually fracture off, allowing the break to go up the road.  That is every other race.  Yesterday it felt like people were using hand grenades, not hammers.