A Quick Recap of a Fortnight -- Church Creek TT/Reston & Tysons

Jake started his own blog so I didn't feel compelled to say anything after last weekend.  You can find it here http://thesharpenedelbows.blogspot.com/

From my perspective, last weekend was a nightmare.  The last minute problem with the disc wheel was terrible; thank goodness I didn't ride over with Liam because Jake never would have even made it to the start. 
Here is Liam finishing

 Sunday was Reston.  I was hoping Jake would finally have a good race to get a little positive energy back.  I saw him go by in great position but then didn't see him come back by, but then he was rolling toward the pit.  I ran up to the pit and he seemed to be ok.  They put him back in the lead group.  He came around in good position again, but one lap later...no Jake.  Ugh.  I waited and nothing so I started walking briskly toward the crashy corner.  I saw a guy carrying his bike and asked if there was an HPC kid down.  His response was that "there are like 15 guys down."  Ugh.  So I started jogging down there.  When I got to the corner, I didn't see him.  I was about to go back but crossed the road and there he was in the cop car

He was in the cop car because the chairs were all occupied.  He was pretty shaken up actually, as the adrenalin kicked in and he was a bit queezy when they scrubbed his wounds.  So I brought the car around.  He was ok, but still.   We spent some quality time that afternoon applying tegaderm and gauze.

Today was Tysons.  We wanted him to attack for training.  It was good.  He attacked on the lap 2

Then he tried again mid-race tried to bridge to a break but got shut down by NCVC.  It started to rain so he sat in the back.  He clearly wasn't hurting though because he was talking to the guy next to him while riding up the hill.   There was a crash ahead of him on turn 1 of the final lap, which gapped him (along with a bunch of others).  He came back around with the others and sprinted with a guy just to get in the effort, which was good.  He rode to and from the race.  It was pretty positive.  He felt good and got in some attacks.

Now we're packing for Nationals  We'll drive to Madison WI tomorrow.  Hopefully it will take something like 13 hours (including stops).  More reports from there.  Based on our last 2 years, we're not over-worrying about nationals.  Yes, it's important, but it's also a crap shoot.  It's so chaotic. We'll see how it goes.