The original plan was to leave Friday night and race the whole High Desert Omnium. Then we decided to leave Saturday morning, skip the TT and race the evening criterium. Keegan O’Neill wanted to race the track on Saturday, so it meant we wouldn’t be able to get out of town until a bit later. Then we realized that we wouldn’t be able to make it to the crit either if we waited for Keegan and it seemed silly for Stephen Lockwood and me to drive the Team Van down by ourselves. So we decided to skip the crit too.

I was fine with this because it meant I could hang out with my friends like a normal person on Friday. I met up with Lockwood at the crack of noon to go for a shake out ride before we drove to Bend. Lockwood had a combination of a hangover (he went out too) and a bangover (from MTBing with Jacob Rathe earlier in the week) so it was nice for us to spin it out. We ended up riding for like 3 hrs in the West hills and if that didn’t take of Steve’s hangover the tasty Korean-Hawaiian Fusion we got after sure would have. We decided skipping the TT and the crit was a good idea.

Around 4 we finally got the van loaded up and Keegan, Stephen and I headed out towards the High Desert. Although we’d planned on camping, we texted Cameron Clark on the way there and he said we could stay with him at his parents house. Cam’s house turned out to be the best place to stay because it was immediately adjacent to Long Board Louie’s – the only burrito place in Bend (worth visiting). We ate dinner there the night before our race and Lockwood found a punch card for a free burrito that was almost like half full.

The actual High Desert Road Race was on Sunday morning and it was a beautiful day. The course was pretty straight forward with some highway grade hills and a 60-mile course for myself and a 90-mile course for the elite guys. I felt like my race was one of the easiest I’ve ever done. There weren’t enough teams present and only a few people wanted to put in any work to push the pace. After 54 boring miles, we finally hit the final climb and the field began to pick up a bit of speed. The race ended in a sprint and I got 5th which is my best result yet as a cat 3. Sometimes a boring race is good I guess.

Meanwhile, the elite race was anything but boring. There was a solid Team O turn out, with 8 riders in the race. Other Oregon teams had large rosters and the Specialized junior elite racing team was there as well with a full roster (the team was in Bend for a training camp). Given the large number of riders we had, the team got together to plan out the tactics before the race. It was decided that Cameron and Keegan would cover the late race moves, with Boone and Lockwood working to cover things for the first half of the race and the remaining team members working to try to keep the race together and bring back moves if no one from the team could get off the front in them. The race started off fast. As in, really really fast for the first 20 minutes or so and eventually a large group rolled off the front. However, with a number of the heavy hitters in the field up the road, Team O massed on the front and worked hard to pull back the break. It was a great team showing, and sure enough, the move was reeled in.

At this point Lockwood and Boone moved back up to the front and started attacking and covering moves again. The attacks came pretty regularly since the field was all together at this point, but Boone and Lockwood managed to get in all of them. Ultimately, Lockwood got in to a move with Jeremy Russell (TAI) and Carl Hoefer (HCH) and some other dudes. Lockwood and Russell put in the majority of the work as the other break members all had contenders back in the pack and refused to do much. Despite the extra weight, the group managed to hold on to the finish, where Lockwood attacked in the final kilometer and crossed the line first by a mile. All-in-all the team rode great. They put together a plan, executed it perfectly, and the win wouldn’t have been possible without everyone. Sometimes a hard race is good I guess!

After the race we took Lockwood’s winnings and went to Long Board Louie’s (LBL’s) – the only burrito place in Bend (worth visiting). Lockwood treated Cameron, Keegan and me to burritos and now he almost had a full punch card. It was a time to celebrate so we went down to the river and lounged about. Unfortunately, I’d burnt the bottoms of my feet standing around barefoot and watching Lockwood get his podium earlier, so I had a pretty hard time walking down to the river. Keegan tried to convince me to float down the river back to the place where we had parked the van, but I told him I wasn’t no polar bear and that I wasn’t no fool neither and so I took Cameron’s shoes and walked back. Cameron had like feet of granite or something so he didn’t seem to mind walking back barefoot.

We stayed at Cam’s house again Sunday night and had a great BBQ. Then we got up Monday morning, rented some killer bikes from Scott at Village Bike and Ski (definitely recommend heading out to Sun River to check them out if you're ever in Bend). I thought the MTBing was harder than the race and less boring too. It was certainly more painful, at least for Keegan and I who pretty much deforested the trails with our bodies. Our MTBing ride was way longer than I’d thought and so I was super dehydrated afterwards in addition to really sore and really hungry so needless to say I was stoked to visit LBL’s – the only burrito place in Bend (worth visiting) – one last time after we got back. This gave Steve enough punches to redeem the free burrito punch card, his second great victory of the weekend.

When we finally left Bend Monday evening, it was way too late for Keegan to be able to meet up with his girlfriend at 7 like he’d planned to. We decided Keegan probably shouldn’t have told his girlfriend that he would be able to meet her at 7 when we were going MTBing at noon and planning on riding for 3-4 hours. The moral of the whole weekend seems to have been that none of us are very good at keeping plans or at time management, but as long as you're with your buds it doesn’t really matter.

High and Dry

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