TJ Woodruff ONLINE

So a majority of my posts are written with you, the reader, in mind. This post is written mainly out of self interest as I’m awaiting the start of today’s 110 mile road race. I’ve got about an hour before we roll over to the race start (appropriately for Arkansas, we start at Wal-Mart), but I’ve already got things in order and need to kill some nervous energy here.

This week flew by; actually most of it drove by. It’s been 1800 miles in the Taurus since Monday afternoon. Chloe and I made some quick time to Boulder and even got to check out Vegas along the way. Wednesday seemed somewhat normal since there was no driving, some riding, and plenty of eating and relaxing Boulder. I really needed that before enduring yesterday’s 800 mile drive. I left town early enough so that I still got here with a bit of daylight, but I was pretty bushed after spending the entire day in the car.  Nothing a good nights sleep couldn’t fix though; I felt pretty good this morning.

If I have a couple ounces of energy left I’ll be sure to post something with today’s recap later this evening. Keep it Real, TJ

Brutal pretty much sums up today’s race. The speed was so much faster than any race I’ve ever done before, but I was feeling good about it. The field size of 220 riders made for a couple of sketchy situations on the road. The first came as we crossed some train tracks. I was towards the front 1/3 of the group and over to the left so I got by pretty easily, but about 15 guys went down hard. I looked back to see that Ian must have been to last to get around unscathed. He says that he bunny hopped the tracks, landed and locked them up, then slid it out sideways to ride around the carnage. Sketchy situation number two was rolling through the first feed zone. I came to complete stop so that I could reload with fresh bottles since the six year old volunteers could barely get their hands around the bottle and were dropping a lot of them. Sketchy situation number three was an uphill crash that I was behind. The guy in front of me was going down so I rear ended him and sort of did a nose wheelie. I got my feet on the ground and was able to run it out before going down.

I was with the lead group until we hit the eleven mile climb that started 75 miles into the stage. By this point I was starting to feel some fatigue, but the worst of it was that my feet were throbbing, my back wrenched, and I had a weird side/chest ache. Other than this I think my legs and lungs were still ok.  Needless to say I got popped from this lead group and climbed solo. By the top I’d joined up with six others so we had a seven man team time trial going on. I at the limit a couple of times but I couldn’t get dropped because I thought I’d never find my way to the finish. As it turned out, all of the intersections were marshaled, but the fear of getting lost likely kept me in the group. I finished 136^th, but the key thing here is that I finished and lived to fight again tomorrow. On schedule are 93 miles of sharply rolling hills. I’ll be sure to buckle up. Keep it Real, -TJ