Tommy Nankervis

Golfing at UGA…

// August 31st, 2007 // 8 Comments » // A Day Down Under

I played golf last week, on the Georgia University course. It was a really nice course, and i sucked, big time! I think i was still injured from the crash in the USPro Crit, where i hurt my back – at least i can use that excuse for not beating Oldy Dave!

Here are some picture from the game:

The golf cart – gotta save the legs from walking!

The tees are the UGA Bulldog, pretty impressive…

I spent most of the day in the bunkers, averaging around 20 shots per hole!

Keally’s Old Man, who has named himself “Big Oldy Dave”, spent most of the day in the woods, but gave me a hiding on the score card!

The pin has the UGA logo on it. Unfortunately, i don’t think i ever made it to the pin (aside from taking it out for Dave to hole)! Each hole i just picked the ball up out of the bunker and put it in my pocket!

There has been a lot of training going down this week. Motivation is still really good, and hopefully the season ends well. We have been getting a lot of coffee drinking done at the roasting house too, check out how cool the porch is for chilling, pre and post-ride!

The first college football game of the season is tomorrow, so hopefully we can get tickets and watch a good game! My next update should have some good pictures of the game, and of the Atlanta 100km race Monday morning…

Bit of a rushed update i know, but i will do a better one next time…

Please write comments!

Laters…

Downer’s Grove

// August 23rd, 2007 // 5 Comments » // A Day Down Under

Hey there dudes,

Last weekend we raced the Downer’s Grove criteriums. There are two of them, the Open race on Saturday, for Pros, cat 1, and cat 2 riders, and the Sunday one, for Pro only. This is a pretty safe course, which is really cool, with nice wide turns, and no dodgy corners, unless of course, it pisses down with rain!
Our view out the hotel window for both Saturday and Sunday looked a bit like this, well, actually, this was it:

Fun!
The circuit has 8 turns, and makes a bit of a figure ‘8′ around the town of Downer’s Grove. It is the coolest course, and also doubles as the USA National Criterium Championship for the Sunday race.
This year, the race was again taken by a non-American, in Martin Gilbert, of Canada, afer Hilton Clarke won the 2006 edition. Kirk O’bee won the National title though, and will get the stars and stripes jersey for the next year. The race was full of stacks, and good ones too. They reckon there must have been at least one crash every lap. Basically, after i got through the first 25 laps, and it started to rain heavier, i realised it was a matter of time before i went down too! With 62 laps, and 8 corners per lap, that made 496 corners, where a crash seemed pretty likely – not to mention the chances on various man-hole covers, or crazy riders who like to crash in the straights being the cause too!
With ten to go, i thought we might be right, and i had Evan up the front, just behind the Kelly guys (who ended up winning), and then some crazy guy decided to crash in front of me with seven to go! I went straight over the hangers, onto my back, and landed in the gutter hard enough to skip up it too… pretty painful! Evan, who started to miss the crash, had his wheel taken out from in front of him, and began a flip, to miss going head first into a tree by millimeters! Luckily we were able to get back in to the race before 5 to go, and get up the front again. There was another big pile up in the final straight, which we avoided this time, and Ev pulled through for 7th place, and i got 11th, thanks to the dudes who decided to crash!
Here is my jersey that i crashed in. Although it doesn’t look bad, it does add colour to the post for you loyal readers!

After we got back from the race and got cleaned up, we headed down to the lobby and ordered a Pappa John’s pizza, and some bread sticks. It was so good! Here, big Ev and Matt show how much they’re enjoying it, even though Matt looks like a deer in headlights! Another cool thing, is Matt Shriver has now joined the missing saddle crew, with an upgrade to the bad ass blog site! Actually, another internet thing to check out, is that of our star team mate, Neil Shirley, who has now got a real website! Check them both out!

I am now back in Athens, and actually finding motivation to do 4-5 hour rides, which is pretty bad ass, seeing as the season is coming to an end shortly, and it is about 105 degrees every day… Maybe i will have to have a crack at the Warny or something! There is talk we may get to race the Sun Tour, so that would be a pretty good finish to the season… Let’s hope we can get in! Part of the motivation for the long rides is this bridge i get to ride under. I reckon it’s so cool cruising under this, and really gets me in the mood to do a decent training ride. Only trouble is, its only fifteen minutes into my training ride, on the way to the coffee shop! It is pretty cool though!

Well i have a weekend off racing this weekend, and after that, the Americans will contest the USPro Road Race, in Greenville, SC, and then the Monday will be the Atlanta 100km Classic, won last year by… Lightnin’ Jeff Hopkins, so we’ll be hoping he can repeat that again in a fortnight!

I am off now, as i need to watch some TV, Crocodile Dundee II is on! Also, i am interested in having some more comments to read, so if there is anyone out there who usually makes comments, but hasn’t been lately, then please make some comments. If you don’t usually write a comment, feel free to make one too, it gives me something interesting to read!

Huckfactor fact: Did you know Benjamin Franklin invented the rocking chair?!

Laters…

Dahlonega Stage Race…

// August 23rd, 2007 // 1 Comment » // A Day Down Under

… Means too many hills!

This past weekend we raced the Gold Diggers Stage race, Georgia Cup. This is by far the hardest local race i have ever done, if you could call it that! Georgia Cups aren’t really raced by GA riders only, but more like every state surrounding GA too, which makes for great racing! People who live in Georgia and ride bikes know the 3-gap, and 6-gap rides, and that they are hard. This race had a time trial up a seven-plus kilometer climb, then a relatively rolling circuit race, followed the next day by the 3-gap ride, in reverse, twice. The catch there was we did the longest climb three times, as we started at the bottom of it, and finished atop it, third time up! We figured it was roughly 11km up, maybe a bit more, each lap. This was the long climb, and then we had a couple of other decent ones too, like Wolf Pen, which was about 3-4km up, then a screaming descent, then straight up the next climb, which was about 5 km!

Gravity doesn’t exactly allow me to sprint uphill too fast, so this race had my work cut out for me! The time trial went well, Thad, the undefeated time trial king of 2007, continued on form, and racked up win number 75, of something ridiculous! I came in 5th in that one. The afternoon circuit race had Tim the toolman take the honours, after breaking away with half a lap to go with one other dude. There were two guys chasing them, and i won the sprint for 5th. Thad held onto the leaders jersey too, which was nice, and everything was cruising along as planned.

The next day was the feared 3-gap race, and the 5am wake-up didn’t make it any more exciting! To cut a long story short, as i am returning to this post after slacking it for 2 weeks, we lost the lead on the final day. Some dude broke away out of the holes, and put 4 minutes into us over the day. Thad put in a great ride to come second in the stage, and he got second on GC too. I was a bit of a way back, in eighth place, and that was my finishing GC spot too. It was a big weekend of racing really, and i feel it helped get the legs into gear for Downer’s Grove.

Here is a photo of our girlfriends in the feed zone; Tim’s girlfriend Julie in front, my hot girlfriend Keally behind her, and Thad’s Dixie at the back! Thanks to Oldie Dave for the picture, and thanks to the girls for feeding!

Not that much of a good post, but i am about to do a better one now!

Catch ya soon!