Day 1:
Packed up and headed out with my buddy Geoff McIntosh by 9:30a from NH. Drove all day, stopping in CT for lunch and Akron, OH for dinner.. If you're ever in Akron, definitely go to Luigi's Italian for dinner. They had an incredible selection of things to eat, like pizza and spaghetti. You could even get your spaghetti with meatballs or sausage. It wasn't quite as good as a can of Spaghettio's, but what is?
On the way out we listened to an audio book about a poor Londoner who made good despite the vendetta of an evil old hag who tried to destroy his life. It was read by some English guy, possibly Winston Churchill (or maybe he was just a character). The audio book actually helped the time pass and it temporarily stopped my ears from bleeding, which was a result of listening to some of the crap music Geoff likes.. Holy shit!
We made it to Louisville at 1:39am, unpacked bikes, bags, and belongings and crashed hard until 9:00a the next day...
Day 2:
Pissing rain. With over an inch of rain in the time that we had been sleeping, we knew the course was going to be a disaster.. We had some breakfast, spun on the trainers in the morning to spin out the long drive of the day before, tuned the bikes up and packed up to head over for registration and pre-ride.
First order of business was to register and see where I would draw for the seeding heats. I reached into the bag to draw a number, grabbed one and hesitated. It felt like a high number, and I contemplated grabbing another one.. I pulled 224, the last possible number to make the 3rd row, which is better than it could have been but I was really hoping for better. After pre-riding the course, I'm not sure it's going to matter though to be honest.
Coming off the pavement at the start, we turn into a section of the course that is pretty much underwater and get covered in mud almost immediately. It's an absolute slog and there are some sections of up and down 180's with off-cambers that would make for a fantastic course under better conditions. But in this case the entire section is unrideable and we're hoofing it. After two laps of destroying my drivetrain and pushing out about 2x the watts I was hoping to expend I called it quits and head to the bikewash. Everybody is in line with their bikes covered with 3x the bike's weight in mud and turf, looking at each other with awesome WTF looks on their faces.
Everybody I talked to says "well it's not really my kind of course" and I figure that's because we've become accustomed to actually riding our bikes in races and not carrying them for longer than the time it takes to hop the barriers or make it up the odd run-up. I'm OK with it though. It's January, it's Kentucky, I kind of expected tough conditions, just not quite this bad. With more showers and some snow, I expect the course will be worse come race time on Thursday.. Then the cold moves in and it will be below freezing until race time on Saturday. So it will be a completely different set of conditions on Saturday for the Finals.
But everybody rides the same course. I came 1000 miles for this and I'm going to give it hell....
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