Redlands Bicycle Classic

"Sierraman" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Anyone picking up local coverage of Redlands? Bessette is
having a good race as Jeanson has been having a few bad
days. I was curious on how much time if any is allowed on
local channels?

thanks,

B-

You know...I was thinking about Jeanson and her bad days
coinciding with her...ahhh well forget
it... Dave

Sierraman said:

Anyone picking up local coverage of Redlands? Bessette is
having a good race as Jeanson has been having a few bad
days. I was curious on how much time if any is allowed on
local channels?

thanks,

B-

can't answer your question, but i see that weldon is 24th
after stage 4. hopefully she'll post about the race after
she gets back.

heather
ps. i would check for your rack obsessed gf too, but
anonymous posters get no rbr glory.

Dave said:

"Sierraman" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Anyone picking up local coverage of Redlands? Bessette is
having a good race as Jeanson has been having a few bad
days. I was curious on how much time if any is allowed on
local channels?

thanks,

B-

You know...I was thinking about Jeanson and her bad days
coinciding with her...ahhh well forget
it... Dave

Have you done Fourier analysis?

Dan

"h squared" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Sierraman said:

Anyone picking up local coverage of Redlands? Bessette
is having a good

race

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

as Jeanson has been having a few bad days. I was curious
on how much

time if

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

any is allowed on local channels?

thanks,

B-

can't answer your question, but i see that weldon is 24th
after stage 4. hopefully she'll post about the race after
she gets back.

heather
ps. i would check for your rack obsessed gf too, but
anonymous posters get no rbr glory.

Are you doing STP again this year?

"Dave" <[email hidden]> wrote in
:"]news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

You know...I was thinking about Jeanson and her bad days
coinciding with her...

....inablity to get a Canadian license?

"Tim Mullin" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Dave" <[email hidden]> wrote in
:"]news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

You know...I was thinking about Jeanson and her bad days
coinciding with her...

....inablity to get a Canadian license?

High HCT revelation Dave

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by H Squared

can't answer your question, but i see that weldon is 24th
after stage 4. hopefully she'll post about the race after
she gets back.

heather
ps. i would check for your rack obsessed gf too, but
anonymous posters get no rbr glory.

If you're referring to me, I wouldn't consider myself rack-obsessed. Really, I just would rather see jugs than read senseless suppositions about the Tour de France... but you're entitled to your views.

I'll take this opportunity to possibly give away my identity in order to tell a story that probably shouldn't be told, but I feel the need to get it out into the ether and off my back since I will have no opportunity to resolve the problem otherwise. It's really long, and I apologize. But I want to hear the truth. Was I way out of line? I certainly paid for it if I was...

I joined a team for Redlands as a guest. I didn't know at all what I would be riding for - I assumed they would want my absolute best performance. I thought I'd be going to RACE. So I trained my ass off all winter. I worked extra super hard, knowing that I'd have a team that might not be happy with someone struggling in with the gruppetto for 80th place every day. I figured my only chance for personal glory would be the prologue, so I wanted to ride well that day. I had heard the women I was staying with were notoriously late all the time, so I stated firmly that I would like to arrive at the course at least 2 hours before my start, and that would be the only thing I would ask for. This was met with resistance, since their director didn't want them hanging around all that time, and insisted that they only needed a 30 minute warmup. they basically told me, you're a guest, you don't have a say. You do what we want you to do.

Regardless, they ended up leaving extra time for traffic and there was none, so I got what I wanted, got there early and got a good warmup and proceeded to have the best race of my life to date. I took over 40 seconds of last year's time and while I was out of the money on the stage, I was up there with some big names - I was really pleased.

I told the team that as a guest, I didn't expect them to ride for me. What I didn't expect was that I would be lowest on the totem pole even though I was top of the team on the GC, if only by a handful of seconds... the next day in the Crestline race, I was given the duty of leading out the sprinter for the bonus sprint. Fine, I was nervous about getting to the front as I am notoriously bad at moving through the pack, but I said I'd do my best. I had also been given the role of protecting the team GC leader.

The roll-out was exceedingly nervous. I was terrified. 140 women, tailwind, roads with cracks and reflectors and medians. I was just trying to get into a good position and not get killed, and I have to admit I completely forgot about the rest of the team, I was that freaked out. After a few miles, I was forcefully reminded of them when I was pedalling along on the left side of the pack and one girl from my "team" came crashing into my bars from the left side, nearly knocking me down into our GC hopeful. I managed to keep my bike upright, but was pretty freaked out.

I recoverd, got out into the wind to pull our GC hopeful up to the front to keep her safe. Attacks were flying, and the pace was high. We were getting squeezed constantly with medians and oncoming traffic. Finally, we took a left turn and I had to brake to avoid a median and got pushed to the back. The QOM was coming up, and I had to haul ass to get back up to the front over the top, risking life and limb to move up for the sprint point on the descent. I looked around a bit for the sprinter, but I had been told it was her reponsibility to find me at the front, so I was simply concerning myself with getting back up to the front.

With two miles to go to the sprint, I radioed for the sprinter to find out where she was. I couldn't hear jack on the stupid thing. I was AT the front. Looking around. Nobody. Then the one who tried to crash me earlier screams at me that the sprinter has a flat, and I need to go back and get her.

Now, I am a climber. I thought I'd be protecting our GC rider, and with the stage ending on a big mountain, I thought it very odd and rather strategically wrong to send me (someone who is small and not great in the cross headwind we were experiencing) to go back for a sprinter when the only sprint bonus of the day had passed. But, with all the screaming this woman was doing at me, I soft pedaled to filter back. She screamed at me to go back faster. Not wanting to jam on the brakes to do it, I kept soft pedaling.

I spent the next 25 miles on the back of the pack and in the caravan radioing to the sprinter who apparently had a broken microphone and couldn't respond. I saw at least a half dozen women in that time who had either crashed or flatted chase back on and move up past me. No sign of my sprinter. For all I knew, she had climbed into the car and gone home. I wasn't about to get behind the caravan and spend all day chasing for nothing. I guess that's the sacrifice you are supposed to make for a team, but they weren't really my team. They didn't pay my way out. They weren't going to give me any support if I flatted, and ****, I had just had the best TT of my life, my form was hot and I wanted to be in the pack for the final climb, dammit.

So I gave up on the sprinter after the feed zone, where I was about a minute behind the peloton in a small group. I hauled our group up to another larger group for a mile or two. I caught my breath, and drove that group up (we're entering the caravan now) to yet another group, containing the screamer. I ignore her, and drive the [censored] out of the group to the base of the final climb and then drop them.

I'm climbing steady, feeling awesome. I start catching people, and about halfway up I find my GC leader and another from the team. The GC leader is cramping. I try to pace her up, give her encouragement. It's clear she's hurting. I stay with her for the middle third of the climb (I am setting what feels like a ridiculously easy pace for me but I keep dropping her). Finally, I'm setting a moderate tempo and I look back and she's way down the climb and the other woman has left her, too. I then figure she's told us to go on and ride, and so I do. I finish a couple minutes up, [censored] that I had to spend all day at the back of the pack in the caravan because I was freakin' flying and could probably have placed top 20 or 30 on the stage and moved up in the GC if I had started with the leaders. Now we're all below 50th place.

I get screamed at for many minutes after the stage, and everyone is really angry with me. I ask another friend for a ride off the mountain, because I'm being treated like I just ruined everyone's life.

That evening back at the host-house, nobody is any happier. It's clear that if I stay and do the rest of this race, it's going to be one huge conflict the entire time. I don't get paid for this [censored]. I paid my way, took a week's vacation time from my job and I absolutely refuse to be treated like trash just for a freakin' bike race. So after a heated "team meeting" where I'm the target for all their frustrations and they just lay it all on me, I blow up and it is decided that I'm going home and not finishing the race if I can't just unquestioningly follow their orders. I figure even if I do, I will manage to do it wrong somehow because nothing I do will ever please these women. So I pay the extra $250 to get a cab to the airport while they go to race and soon enough I am home and much happier with cat, husband and house.

It was just a doomed relationship from the get-go. I'm sure these women will do fine this year as a team, they seem like they have some talent and they get tons of support. Perhaps it was just bad chemistry, but I certainly don't regret anything I did. Maybe I wasn't a good team player in that situation, but I know in my heart that I am a good teammate. I just am not used to being ordered around like I'm some third-class citizen and being treated with zero respect. It just pisses me off.

PS, Suz did freakin' awesome! she was totally rockin' it with the big girls. Kicked ass she did. Congrats on a fine performance woman!

Quoted message said:

You know...I was thinking about Jeanson and her bad days
coinciding with

her...ahhh well forget

Quoted message said:

it... Dave

exactly!

"pedalchick" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

H Squared said:

can't answer your question, but i see that weldon is
24th after stage

4.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

hopefully she'll post about the race after she gets
back. heather
ps. i would check for your rack obsessed gf too, but
anonymous posters get no rbr glory.

If you're referring to me, I wouldn't consider myself rack-
obsessed. Really, I just would rather see jugs than read
senseless suppositions about the Tour de France... but
you're entitled to your views.

I'll take this opportunity to possibly give away my
identity in order to tell a story that probably shouldn't
be told, but I feel the need to get it out into the ether
and off my back since I will have no opportunity to
resolve the problem otherwise. It's really long, and I
apologize. But I want to hear the truth. Was I way out of
line? I certainly paid for it if I was...

I joined a team for Redlands as a guest. I didn't know at
all what I would be riding for - I assumed they would want
my absolute best performance. I thought I'd be going to
RACE. So I trained my ass off all winter. I worked extra
super hard, knowing that I'd have a team that might not be
happy with someone struggling in with the gruppetto for
80th place every day. I figured my only chance for
personal glory would be the prologue, so I wanted to ride
well that day. I had heard the women I was staying with
were notoriously late all the time, so I stated firmly
that I would like to arrive at the course at least 2 hours
before my start, and that would be the only thing I would
ask for. This was met with resistance, since their
director didn't want them hanging around all that time,
and insisted that they only needed a 30 minute warmup.
they basically told me, you're a guest, you don't have a
say. You do what we want you to do.

Regardless, they ended up leaving extra time for traffic
and there was none, so I got what I wanted, got there
early and got a good warmup and proceeded to have the best
race of my life to date. I took over 40 seconds of last
year's time and while I was out of the money on the stage,
I was up there with some big names - I was really pleased.

I told the team that as a guest, I didn't expect them to
ride for me. What I didn't expect was that I would be
lowest on the totem pole even though I was top of the team
on the GC, if only by a handful of seconds... the next day
in the Crestline race, I was given the duty of leading out
the sprinter for the bonus sprint. Fine, I was nervous
about getting to the front as I am notoriously bad at
moving through the pack, but I said I'd do my best. I had
also been given the role of protecting the team GC leader.

The roll-out was exceedingly nervous. I was terrified.
140 women, tailwind, roads with cracks and reflectors and
medians. I was just trying to get into a good position
and not get killed, and I have to admit I completely
forgot about the rest of the team, I was that freaked
out. After a few miles, I was forcefully reminded of them
when I was pedalling along on the left side of the pack
and one girl from my "team" came crashing into my bars
from the left side, nearly knocking me down into our GC
hopeful. I managed to keep my bike upright, but was
pretty freaked out.

I recoverd, got out into the wind to pull our GC hopeful
up to the front to keep her safe. Attacks were flying,
and the pace was high. We were getting squeezed
constantly with medians and oncoming traffic. Finally, we
took a left turn and I had to brake to avoid a median and
got pushed to the back. The QOM was coming up, and I had
to haul ass to get back up to the front over the top,
risking life and limb to move up for the sprint point on
the descent. I looked around a bit for the sprinter, but
I had been told it was her reponsibility to find me at
the front, so I was simply concerning myself with getting
back up to the front.

With two miles to go to the sprint, I radioed for the
sprinter to find out where she was. I couldn't hear jack
on the stupid thing. I was AT the front. Looking around.
Nobody. Then the one who tried to crash me earlier screams
at me that the sprinter has a flat, and I need to go back
and get her.

Now, I am a climber. I thought I'd be protecting our GC
rider, and with the stage ending on a big mountain, I
thought it very odd and rather strategically wrong to send
me (someone who is small and not great in the cross
headwind we were experiencing) to go back for a sprinter
when the only sprint bonus of the day had passed. But,
with all the screaming this woman was doing at me, I soft
pedaled to filter back. She screamed at me to go back
faster. Not wanting to jam on the brakes to do it, I kept
soft pedaling.

I spent the next 25 miles on the back of the pack and in
the caravan radioing to the sprinter who apparently had
a broken microphone and couldn't respond. I saw at least
a half dozen women in that time who had either crashed
or flatted chase back on and move up past me. No sign of
my sprinter. For all I knew, she had climbed into the
car and gone home. I wasn't about to get behind the
caravan and spend all day chasing for nothing. I guess
that's the sacrifice you are supposed to make for a
team, but they weren't really my team. They didn't pay
my way out. They weren't going to give me any support if
I flatted, and ****, I had just had the best TT of my
life, my form was hot and I wanted to be in the pack for
the final climb, dammit.

So I gave up on the sprinter after the feed zone, where I
was about a minute behind the peloton in a small group. I
hauled our group up to another larger group for a mile or
two. I caught my breath, and drove that group up (we're
entering the caravan now) to yet another group, containing
the screamer. I ignore her, and drive the [censored] out of the
group to the base of the final climb and then drop them.

I'm climbing steady, feeling awesome. I start catching
people, and about halfway up I find my GC leader and
another from the team. The GC leader is cramping. I try to
pace her up, give her encouragement. It's clear she's
hurting. I stay with her for the middle third of the climb
(I am setting what feels like a ridiculously easy pace for
me but I keep dropping her). Finally, I'm setting a
moderate tempo and I look back and she's way down the
climb and the other woman has left her, too. I then figure
she's told us to go on and ride, and so I do. I finish a
couple minutes up, [censored] that I had to spend all day at
the back of the pack in the caravan because I was freakin'
flying and could probably have placed top 20 or 30 on the
stage and moved up in the GC if I had started with the
leaders. Now we're all below 50th place.

I get screamed at for many minutes after the stage, and
everyone is really angry with me. I ask another friend for
a ride off the mountain, because I'm being treated like I
just ruined everyone's life.

That evening back at the host-house, nobody is any
happier. It's clear that if I stay and do the rest of this
race, it's going to be one huge conflict the entire time.
I don't get paid for this [censored]. I paid my way, took a
week's vacation time from my job and I absolutely refuse
to be treated like trash just for a freakin' bike race. So
after a heated "team meeting" where I'm the target for all
their frustrations and they just lay it all on me, I blow
up and it is decided that I'm going home and not finishing
the race if I can't just unquestioningly follow their
orders. I figure even if I do, I will manage to do it
wrong somehow because nothing I do will ever please these
women. So I pay the extra $250 to get a cab to the airport
while they go to race and soon enough I am home and much
happier with cat, husband and house.

It was just a doomed relationship from the get-go. I'm
sure these women will do fine this year as a team, they
seem like they have some talent and they get tons of
support. Perhaps it was just bad chemistry, but I
certainly don't regret anything I did. Maybe I wasn't a
good team player in that situation, but I know in my heart
that I am a good teammate. I just am not used to being
ordered around like I'm some third-class citizen and being
treated with zero respect. It just pisses me off.

That's quite a story! At least you are a good climber. Good
women climbers are few and far between.

pedalchick said:

H Squared said:

ps. i would check for your rack obsessed gf too, but
anonymous posters get no rbr glory.

If you're referring to me, I wouldn't consider myself rack-
obsessed. Really, I just would rather see jugs than read
senseless suppositions about the Tour de France... but
you're entitled to your views.

but you knew it was you i was thinking of, so i reached my
goal. plus i wanted to tease bj. but anyhow, if i had known
that things had been so awful at redlands for you i wouldn't
have made the joke. sorry.

and i'm sorry you had such a crappy race (team mate wise).
i've never been on a team, so i would be talking out my ass
(even more than usual) if i started making comments on your
story, interesting as it was.

hh

Sierraman said:

Quoted message said:

Are you doing STP again this year?

well, bruce, what this has to do with redlands, i don't
know. but i'm 35 years old and i didn't train a lick in
october, november, december or january. it would be fun, but
i don't know if i can pull it together in time.

(funny thing though- today i did a short thing on mercer
island down thru the renton airport, and a cyclist told me i
was "brave" to be skating there. i had to bite my tongue
over that.)

ok, that's answered, and now i would much rather read
things like pedalchick's race report than talk about this
anymore. sorry bj.

hh

pedalchick said:

Quoted message said:

I'll take this opportunity to possibly give away my
identity

sorry, one more thing- will you post under your real name
now, or do you want to keep it secret?

heather

In article <[email hidden]>,

pedalchick said:

I'll take this opportunity to possibly give away my
identity in order to tell a story that probably shouldn't
be told, but I feel the need to get it out into the ether
and off my back since I will have no opportunity to
resolve the problem otherwise. It's really long, and I
apologize. ButI want to hear the truth. Was I way out of
line? I certainly paid for it if I was...I joined a team
for Redlands as a guest.

Maybe it's just me, but what you described seems pretty
shortsighted on the part of that team. It looks like they
were more interested in their own personal results and
following an established team pecking order. Isn't part
of why a team like that exists to get the sponsors name
out? You were carrying the sponsor's name closer to the
front than any of the rest of them, it seems like they
ought to have appreciated that. Plus it sounds like they
couldn't think on their feet. "We have an established
game plan, and we're sticking to it, no matter if it
makes us go backwards".

How'd you end up getting hooked up with them in the
first place?

--
tanx, Howard

Q: Why did the metalhead cross the road?
R: Because he's a gullible moron who'll buy
anything with a skull on it.

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

pedalchick said:

I want to hear the truth. Was I way out of line?

Maybe a little but not way; however, we've only heard your
version and, as my mother-out-law used to say, no matter how
thin the pancake it still has two sides. What'd'ja think
Victor Hugo Pena shoulda done while he was wearing yellow
last year?

That said, teams have a tricky dynamic (especially that one,
it seems; you've given us more than enough clues to figure
it out) and my experience is that if you go through life
getting along with every member of every team you've been
with, you're not trying hard enough; and I'm not just
talking about cycling teams. Sometimes, figuring out when to
walk away is the toughest decision you can make. Other
times, it's pretty easy. Did you make the right decision to
walk away? I don't know, but it sounds like they made it
pretty easy.

BTW: asking rbr what it thinks? Hmmm. I'd worry more about
what that says about you than the Redlands incident.

h squared said:

pedalchick said:

Quoted message said:

I'll take this opportunity to possibly give away my
identity

sorry, one more thing- will you post under your real name
now, or do you want to keep it secret?

Whether she posts under her real name or not, it's no
longer secret.

Robert Chung said:

Whether she posts under her real name or not, it's no
longer secret.

ok, of course not to you, but it may be to people who are
too lazy to try to figure it out, or to people who think
they figured it out but are wrong, or to people in the
future who come here and have never read that post, or to
people who only read scattered posts and miss that one. and
the other thing is not everyone wants their real name
connected with this place. even i wanted to stop posting
with "halvorson" in my name.

hh

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Robert Chung

BTW: asking rbr what it thinks? Hmmm. I'd worry more about
what that says about you than the Redlands incident.

God, you're right. I'm such a loser!
Yeah, I don't care much if people know who I am if they want to bother digging through the results.
But, I'll decline to identify myself in this thread, thanks.
I'm just happy to come home to my own team so I can race with people who care but don't give a sh&t, if you know what I mean.

h squared said:

and the other thing is not everyone wants their real name
connected with this place.

Completely understandable. I use the pseudonym "Robert
Chung" because I'm trying to keep my real name, Henry Chang,
from being connected with this place.