Week off ,and the nightmare race that could have been

Sorry for the delay I've been nursing my wounds(and wallet) for the last week after the disaster of a race I did (or tryed to do) last weekend. It was to be a great weekend of racing under the sun of New Jerseys Sussex county. Well there wasnt much fun in the racing as Thursday after I pre reged of course the bronchitis that I thought I had fought off made a heralding return and screwed me over hard. I went to the doctor this past week and he put me on antibiotics and after a complete 8 days off the bike and using the medication I have been given I'm feeling a little better and hopefully will have a sickness free run-up to nationals and the month of July.

Next week is empire qualifiers so its kinda a big deciding factor of what I will be doing in the lader half of July due to the fact that If I don't get to 10 I wont be allowed to go to the Empire state games but I'm not worried just being sick free should catapult me into that.


Lets start the race report off on a positive note , I'm never doing a junior race again (with exception of nationals.). I raced, or attempted to race the big canam u-19 challenge down in New Jersey this weekend. It was a 2 day 3 stage deal with a TT a crit on sat and a 1.5 mile circuit race on sunday. My race began to go south about Thursday as I realized I was relapsing a bit on the sickness that hit me a couple of weeks ago...but to late I was signed up and going any ways.
The 8 k up hill tt went terrible ... my fault though...It was way to cold and just couldn't breath. Finished about a minute down.

The crit is where the real birds started to hit the fan when I was feeling quite all right narrowly missing a pream to the rider who actually won the race... It was easily the fastest crit I've ever done ...no lie we avged 26 and change ... But all hell broke loose when we were turning onto the front strait to start the bell lap and the rider infront of me, who apparently needs to attend a Handlebars bike repair school because his head set was loose and he turned the bars the wheel keep going strait so he crashed about 5 of us. Came out of it good though only a couple very small scrapes on my knees.

But the true wallet killer of the weekend was the circuit race when on the 3rd lap I was 3rd in line passing 2 riders on the right when the rider flat out rode into me and managed to get his handlebars into my rear wheel totally ruining my 5 race old carbon rear wheel taking about every spoke out of it and putting a huge dig in the rim to make it a total loss, before he smashed into the ground... I rode about 50 more meters and got off in the grass. The weekend basically was a complete nightmare but thats bike racing.
-Ryan