Nashvegas

Back from the Edgar Soto Memorial race in Nashville. It was a huge success as a stage race over Memorial Day weekend last year, but the change in schedule this year also changed the format to a crit series. The promoters and volunteers did such a great job with this event, everything was nailed down to the last detail. If you're racing around the southeast, Tennessee racing is where it's at! This series was also part of the Southeastern Women's series, which helps promote women's racing at all levels.

Friday night we had a kilo TT and sprint heats at the Tennessee Fairgrounds Raceway. This place is bad ass, man! Nashville doesn't have a velodrome, but they could improvise using this 1,000 meter track. I placed a mediocre 3rd in the kilo TT (although this is suspect cuz we didn't have timing chips, and we were milliseconds apart). The sprint heats that followed were basically scratch races, and I qualified in all of those. By the time we were done, it was 10 p.m. and we were in search of food! Random strip mall sushi, anyone?

Saturday night was a crit in the heart of downtown Nashville. I finally met Sharp Emmons, owner of the best socks on the planet, Swiftwick. Not only are his socks the shizz, but Sharp is one of the nicest people I've met in a long time (common in this part of the world, it seems)! Sharp hooked me up with some shorty's before the race, and I would wear them as my good luck charm for the night. Before the crit, they announced a sprint competition with points every 5 laps. The winner of the sprint points would get these crazy E-Motion rollers that you can fully sprint on, and it's almost impossible to fall off of them. I wasn't exactly going for them at the start, but it just sort of went that way so i thought, why not! It was uphill from the start toward the capitol building, then a long drag along the river to the last two tight right-handers to the finish. My legs were so fried from the sprints, that by the end when Andrea Wilson (Kenda Tire) jumped before the second to last turn, I just couldn't match her. Although I ended up 3rd...I won the rollers ;)



If you want to fully experience Nashville culture, you have to hit a honky tonk. So a few of us went to the best honky tonk on Broadway, Robert's Bar and watched this amazing band "Brazilbilly". They play every Saturday night and pack the house! So after Robert's we went to Coyote Ugly, and this is where things got a little...shall I say...fugly?! Thinking about it now, really the only thing that separates this place from a strip joint is that they don't let guys take body shots! I went in there saying, "I'm not getting on the bar," and by the end of the night they were hauling me off by my ankles. Not cute!

Needless to say that yesterday morning I felt like death, and going out like a rock star was not the smartest move, but Nashville culture is to be experienced! So it was about a million degrees and zero shade at the crit yesterday, the final race of the weekend. The finish was a 500-meter long uphill drag. Not the best type of finish for me. Since I wasn't running on all 8 cyclinders, I wanted to be even more watchful during the race, and be aware of everything that was going on around me so I could just slide onto wheels. This seemed to work well, and I narrowly won in a photo finish at the line.

Nashville is great, but I'm glad that the weekend is over and it's good to be back home in the ATL. Think I need a few days rest from all the racing and traveling we've been doing. Not to mention getting all refreshed and ready for Austin!!!