2004 and 2005 were difficult seasons. Our daughter was born May 2004 and that made training and racing very difficult. Nevertheless I persisted and had a decent 2004, racing well and winning silver in the Carolina Time Trial Series at Lowes Motor Speedway.
Unfortunately ‘04 was a bad year for crashes, I had 2, one at the Southend Criterium when I was in a small breakaway with about 5 laps to go. I was second in the group of about 6 when the guy on the front finished his pull as we were cresting a hill but didn’t pull off to the side and my front wheel rolled into his rear wheel and I went down, sustaining the usual road rash. Luckily everyone else avoided me. I remounted and time trialed through the rest of the race, catching a few stragglers but never getting back on. It was just time trial training for me.
Crash 2 came in my last race of the season in Oct ‘04 at Greenville South Carolina. I was in the front group, sitting about 10 back with about 7 laps to go, when a guy cut through on my inside and drifted wide as we were going through the apex of the corner, hitting me and sending me over the high side. The pack was tight going through the corner and 2 or 3 guys hit the deck with me. I went down hard, and dislocated my shoulder briefly.
A couple of days later I had to ride the final time trial at the Lowes Time Trial Series. I was leading the category but had a poor ride and only managed to hang on to the category silver.
In 2005 due to time constraints I decided to focus on time trials, specifically the Lowes Motor Speedway Series. I had a late start training as I was completely off the bike for 3 months after the Oct ‘04 crash and then rode only occasionally for another 3 months (‘til end of March ‘05) while deciding what I was going to do in ‘05. Finally I decided to race but just to focus on the TT series. It took a few months to get up to speed but soon I was back on form and consistently posting the fasted category time. My training tailed off a bit at the end of the season due to work and family demands but I had done enough to clinch the gold.
It was a decent season, I set my personal best at the TT, but also had bad luck. At the State Champs I completely blew my chances of a good result when I had to stop twice, once to remove some starting line tape that had stuck to my front wheel and then at the turn around when the car in front of me was forced to stop by the officials manning the turn around.
This year I might do a race overseas since there is a good chance we’ll be traveling.
