Straight Outta Provo

Had a great time at the training race last night.  I felt great all night and was pretty much in one break or another from the first lap to the end.  Lots of big hitters in attendance.  Just like old times!

Took the girls to the beach this morning and now I am hanging out while Kelly’s at the hospital.  Morgan is sleeping and Haley is watching a moo-vie.

Cassidy seems a good bit better… Now I am worried about taking her back to Utah and leaving her alone all day while I am at work.

I have managed to pass on IN N Out twice now.  I am pretty sure I won’t be able to keep that record going much longer.

We brought Cassidy with us as she’s been having a rough time recently.  More details at Kelly’s blog.  Anyway, we didn’t want to leave her home alone in the 100 degree heat so she came with.  The other night she had a really weird episode.  For about an hour, she was totally out of it, like she didn’t know who we were, she couldn’t walk straight, and would fall every few steps.  We thought maybe she had a stroke or some kind of diabetic shock or something, but she slowly pulled out of it.  And she’s pretty much normal right now.  Normal being asleep most of the time.  She IS 14 after all, which is OLD for a black and tan.  Anyway, hopefully she can stay straight.  We took her to the vet, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with her.

Kelly is at the hospital (not for her) most of the day today, so I am alone with the girls.  I won’t get too into that, but for those in the know, everything has gone well.

Hopefully, she gets home in time for me to hit up the world’s greatest tuesday night race at el dorado park tonight.  Back when we lived here, in the pre-kid era, I pretty much always rocked eldo as we only lived like 4 miles away.  Kelly and I had a sweet routine, whereby she would ride with her dad during the race, and show up for the finish.  Then, we’d ride home, hitting up the Quizno’s by our apartment on the way.  Good times.

A’ight ya’ll, that’s all I have for now.

It was crazy as always.  I felt good, but as anticipated had not the balls to contest the field sprint.  I tried to get away, but that’s pretty much impossible.  Plus, every time I hit it, I’d end up alone and I just can’t go 33+ by myself.  As expected, there was a couple big ass crashes in the last turn. 

My father-in-law got some great pics of the crashes.  I’ll post ‘em if I get ‘em. 

EDIT:  Alright, alright… I’ll add some details… Rahsaan Bahati won again.  This race is tailor made for him and with ROCK (dude) being the sponsor, I’m sure the pressure was on.  

The race feels like it’s downhill the whole time.  Except when you are off the front, then it feel like it’s uphill the whole time.

Today I had the awesomest breakfast ever in the happiest place on earth.  Seal Beach.  Kelly and I rode to breakfast with NO KIDS!!  It was sweet. 

RB Out

Just a quicky…

We made it.  At the last minute, I opted out of racing in San Diego today.  After a ten hour drive, another 4 hours in the car didn’t sound totally awesome.  Especially leaving the family behind.

Had a really nice ride this morning.  I’m not sure it qualified as bench racing afterwords, maybe bench surfing.  Anyway, every time I’m here, I feel like “why’d we move again?”

But then, I don’t have to deal with the freeways, crowds, etc like you would if you were living here, or the cost of living for that matter. 

MBGP tomorrow.  Wish me luck!

Craptains Log.  Stardate June 26, the year of our Lord 2008.

I am pretty amped to get on the road.  Four years on and I still think of Long Beach as my other “home”.

I am on the fence of whether to race Saturday or not.  It’s a couple hours to San Diego, the day after being in the car all day, but it looks like a nice race.  If nothing else, it would be good to blow my legs out before Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!  What to do, what to do?

On a positive note, work gave me a “new” laptop.  New to me anyway.   Apparently, they found out I am leaving town and were worried about my ability to update my weblog. 

So, I did the big commute yesterday and the wind was whipping from the south.  Two hours+ into a block headwind at the end of a long day.  At least it was only 95 degrees.  Please don’t get me wrong.  It makes you tuff, and I will never complain about heat after the winter we had. 

In other news, I hear there is a photo shoot tomorrow and I am being replaced as coverboy.  I know exactly how Zoolander felt when Hansel came to town. 

I think I need to challenge Sandy to a walk-off.

I have got a load of bidness to take care of today… time to quit stalling.

…going on today.  Counting the days before I leave on my next big adventure.  We are heading out to California on Friday.  Kelly’s mom is having surgery, so Kelly will be helping around the house for a couple weeks.  I can only escape for a week, but will hopefully squeeze in a couple bike races and some surfing.  And work, I gotta do a couple days of schmoozing while I’m out there.

Manhattan Beach is on Sunday.  I don’t really have the intestinal fortitude for a 180 degree turn with 300 meters to go in an NRC field sprint situation, but I’ll give it a shot all the same.  I think the best I’ve ever done is getting someone else to the top 5 going into that turn, and then getting the hell out of the way.  I’ll hold out the glimmer of hope that a break can go, and that I can be there, and that miracles really do happen.

Anyway, that’s all I have for the moment…

Surprising no one, I attacked at the start of the first stage into a block headwind.  Patrick from Contender came across, and we held the smallest of gaps for the longest of times.  Eventually we got some breathing room.  Just before we hit the climb proper, C-Hoff (RADDDDD) and Ben from Porculized came across.  Apparently we had six minutes at this point, but I had no clue as we never got a split.  All day.  This was apparently the perfect storm of non-climber dudes in the early move, as I somehow got the KOM at the 10,000′ summit.  One cool thing with bike racing is that there’s always something new you can do.  I had never won a KOM.  Strike that off the list.

Anyway, we rolled pretty good until around 30K to go when we got site of the group coming up behind us.  We had a pretty solid lead still, but C-Hoff decided to sit on and that was the end of it.  I tried to keep it rolling as I would give myself pretty good odds for the stage race if this was the final.  Not surprisingly, I let Cameron know what I thought of his decision, but you know, whatever, it worked out for them.  Them being RADDDD.  D.

So we got caught around 10k to go and RADDDDDDD starts sending guys one at a time.  Unfortunately, I was pretty fried and couldn’t help much.  Ben and Sam were giving it as much as possible, but eventually Gardie Radd got away.  Couldn’t happen to a better looking guy.  Then, RADDDD lit us up in the group sprint too.  I wound up 4th and did a bit of whining.

The next morning was the TT and I was tied for the lead as the officials somehow gave Gardie same time as us, and he had a 15 second bonus for winning.  I got the same for the KOM.  Unfortunately, G-Love is really good at time trialling and I am less so.  To that point, Sandy beat me despite not racing yet this year and being a med student.  He was telling everyone he rode “Merckx style”, but the only thing he was missing was a disc, so don’t believe the hype.  He’s been top 10 in the county in the TT (pros included), so what can I say?  He’s gifted.  Anyway, I dropped to 8th on G.C., and my teammies Sam moved into 4th, Ben into 5th.  Gardie Radd and Bryson Raddd were 1st and 2nd on G.C., with two other teammates within a minute, so were kinda hosed.

The crit in the afternoon was really freaking hard.  We had a plan to try to get a stage win and move Sam onto the G.C. podium.  It half way worked with Sam getting in a break with Bryson.  This was good enough for me, but eventually C-Hoff and and Brad from Canyon got up there too.  Hindsight maybe I should have tried to make the junction at this point too, but I didn’t want the break to be absorbed after all the work Sam had done.  Bryson dumped everyone the last time up the hill to win the stage and the G.C.  Gardie bumped into 2nd.  Sam was third on the stage and made it into the same G.C. spot.  Ben ended up 5th.  I was 8th, and I think Nate was 12th.  Sam made out pretty well on primes in the crit too, so we ended up with some decent loot.  Not compared to RADDDD tho! 

It was a hard weekend as our team was riding well, but they (they being RADDDDDD) just seemed to have one more bullet in every scenario.

Big thanks to the promoters, officials, and volunteers who made this epic event happen.   It absolutely remains one of my favorite races ever. 

The post race party is rad with one d, although as with the past few years it’s hard to enjoy it to the max having the girls (Haley and Morgan) running rampant.  Huge thanks to Kelly for watching them while I bench raced.  I’m sure that was an arduous day.  You are the best.

Oh yeah, I am officially changing the title from King of the Mountains to Intergalactic Ruler of the Mountains.

Sincerely,

Ryan “Turbo” Barrett

Intergalactic Ruler of the Mountains

This weekend is one of my favorite races on the Utah calendar.  Yeah, I say that every week, so I guess this is really, really, really a fav.  If you aren’t doing this race, you are missing out.  Period.  And it suits me less than almost any race all year, so you gotta know, I dig it.  For my out of state friends, the first stage is 80 miles over Bald Mtn. Pass (~10K ft) from Kamas, UT to Evanston, WY. 

“Wyoming- all you need is a bed roll and a horse”.

“Don’t forget your toothbrush- you’re still in your cavity prone years”

Sorry, I had a “Breaking Away” moment.  Anyway, Stage Two is a ten mile time trial.  I thought it was 8, but Sandy says it’s 10, and since he has won it, I’ll go with him.  Stage Three is the best crit course we do all year, with a solid couple block climb and a technical descent in downtown Evanston.  The prize money is really, really solid too.  And there’s a party at the end with a huge raffle with free pizza and beer for the heathens and diet coke for those of us on the straight and narrow.

On that note, did you know that raffles are illegal in Utah?  It is too close to gambling or somesuch, so they have some other name for it- “opportunity give-a-way” or some crap like that.  Also, by law, if someone asks for a free “non-raffle” ticket, they have to give it to them.  Yeah, it’s weird, but I guess some legit non-profit got shut down for it.  Crazy, huh?

Anyway, I guess that was a tangent.  The moral of the story is: Bring your oxygen tank, because we are getting high.  And don’t forget your bedroll.

Yeah, Dr. Sandros- medicine woman, is heading back to the U-T today.

How I managed to get in almost five hours on my bike yesterday with a full day of work:

Wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed (what the hell does this mean?) at 5.

On bike- 5:30-7:30.

Work- 7:30-12:30

Lunch Ride- 12:30-1:30

Work: 12:30-4:30

On Bike: 4:30-6:30

And this time of year, that still leaves three hours of daylight for playing with kids and mowing the lawn.  Glorious.  Usually I skip the lunch ride if I ride in, but Saul Raisin Bread came by with some good stories like riding on the front for six hours of Milan-San Remo, and you know I can’t pass that up.  Let me tell you, that chamois felt great when I pulled it on for the third time to ride home!

I heart summer.

First person who can correctly identify how I came to own this prized Indianapolis Group Ride Champ t-shirt will recieve one used Monex chamois or “The Hard Road II, The Ryan Barrett Story”*.  Keep in mind I have not even visited the circle city in nearly six years.

*See boxtop for official rules.  Millions will enter, none will win.  Not valid where prohibited by law.