By Bryan Moritz
4/29/2007

well this was my final conference race weekend for collegiate and so it was the conference championships down in manhattan kansas.

saturday (to me it looks like i spelled that wrong which very well could be, or it looks wrong to me because i'm wicked tired) was a road race...3 laps on what we were told were 20 mile laps...after the 2nd lap my odometer read 50, and i thought, "Shit, 75 mile road race in 80 degree weather and i don't have any one for bottle handups...i'm screwed!" but luckily i rationed my water and made it the whole 75 miles on 3 bottles.

but yea, 75 miles, that's the longest road race i've ever done, and it was pretty darn fast i thought...we did 75 miles in 3.5 hours...so a little over 22 average. the course was pretty sweet...a little bit of everything: some nice long flat stretches to power along (one point we were chasing down sean noonan who got a gap of around a minute and we were averaging about 32-33 with a tailwind around 10 for about 4 miles just to catch him!) , some steep long hills that really broke the pack up.

oh it was also a first for me and many others...we took not only one but TWO pee breaks!!!!!! literally 30 minutes into our race i had to go sooooooo bad i was debating on pulling to the side to go and try to catch back on but luckily sean noonan had to go to and he rallied the pack to stop and we all went to the side of the road and had a good minute or so break...the follow car came up on our side totally confused and we just waved and laughed :) then with 8 miles to the finish we decided to take another break....it was so hilarious

but yea, i think yesterday was the funest (is that even a word?) race i've ever been in...we had our fair share of attack, or fair share ofjust cruising along chatting, and defintiely our fair share of breaks

about 1.5 miles from the finish on each loop was a feed station...on the final lap, i hit my lap counter o my HR monitor and turned out the final 4 minutes of the race my HR ave was 191 (my max is around 205-210)...and the rest of the race was only 159...yea, those final 4 minutes were brutal...we literally rolled up the hill to the feed zone easily and once we went through one guy would attack, we would bridge up, then someone else would shoot off, and we would keep repeating that till the finish...after all those counters i had nothing for the sprint and rolled across the line 9th overall but still in the lead pack so that was good i thought.

then this morning was a 70 minute crit on the k-state campus...the course was retarded! pot holes everywhere (even some of the corners) and we were only given one traffic lane for most of the .7 mile laps and so that made the cornering really difficult.

i was never really "in" the race today. i was pretty tired from the day before and my cornering is pretty craptastic so about 3 laps into it i was sitting at the back of the pack and going through one of the turns this guy goes down out of no where (he was the same guy that went down last weekend that i ran over) and so after that i was pretty scared through the turns and took no chances and because of that i lost contact with the pack.

i hooked up with a coule Kansas University guys and a U-of-Minn guy...the KU guys were pissed at me because i would go through the corners slower than they would like to but then on the straights they couldn't hold the speed in my draft even so it was dumb. we dropped the KU guys and about 30 minutes intot he race, we saw the pack coming up behind us so the UM guy says, "Let's go balls out until we get caught" so we picked it up and after about a lap we were out of site of the pack so we kept going "balls out" about 15 mintues late UM guy gives up and i keep truckin along. then at 55 minutes into the race i was finally lapped :( and they pulled all lapped riders because the course was so short.

i guess a bunch of guys just gave up after they were shelled from the pack because i still finished 13th overall. but still not happy about my result at all. i need to go work on cornering i guess haha

i'm not sure of the exact conference points total after our 4 weekends of racing, but i do believe i have qualified for collegiate nationals over mother's day weekend. to qualify for nationals, you earn points from the college races you do. then when all is over, the top ranked team (there are also team poitns) gets to send 7 people to nationals...this year it was the u-of-minn. also since this year KU is hosting nationals, they get to send 7 people. then it's either 3 or 4 of the top individuals that are not a part of the teams going get bids to go to nationals. before this weekend, i was sitting 2nd in the individuals and had a small lead over 3rd, but a huge lead over 4th...so i believe i didn't screw up badly enough today to lose my bid into nationals.

so yea, in 2 weekends i'll most likely be traveling down to lawrence kansas to race one last time for iowa state for road racing this season and then it's all DICE racing for me for the rest of the summer...i'm ready to be done racing against cat 1/2 guys in collegiate As...they make me tired :)