About the old man Marian

As some of you might know already, my team mate Marian Pyszczek won Canadian national championships road race in Masters C (50-59). And if you met Marian at the beginning of the summer you must know that he was extremely confident about winning the race and he made sure that everybody knew that he was going to win the race. He was even kind enough to let his competition in the race know that he was going to win the race. I kind of doubted Marian's chances even if it was clear that he was in super form in June. When Marian won the race, it wasn't a surprise to himself. It was a bit of a surprise to me and definitely a surprise to "cycling experts" and to the race favorites. I happened to stumble upon a discussion forum where some of the frustration was vented just weeks after the race. The forum is Florida club Windermere Roadies' forum.

RR was on course that is too flat to create any selection in big strong deep field-couple of long climbs but very gradual-all big ring 53x15 type stuff so going fast and so draft is there-tried again and again to break it up but just way too many strong guys so it came down to big field sprint with nearly all of us still there-got 4th but must admit when winner jumped I knew I couldn't out sprint him and I just cruised last bit not caring about anything except win that was gone. Guy who won was some unknown ( to us guys anyway) who quite literally sat on my wheel for the whole 50 miles-every time I went he just sat there-never put his nose in wind until last 100 m. I was marked from first pedal stroke by the whole peleton and on that kind of course result is inevitable. I guess fair to point out that I was not feeling at all well after Sutton races-got very badly chilled the Fri night and never got over it-didn't ride at all on the Mon or Tues and only for 30 min on Wed before TT-sinuses, sweating, not sleeping, massive headaches-just felt like shit so slept and drank and took aspirin and Claritin D and then I really buried myself trying to make up for the flat in TT so perhaps I was not as strong as usual in RR-still frustrating. results here( Masters were Thurs and Fri) I am Vet C in Canada 50-59yrs -move to Vet D next year and with a 4th and 6th maybe that's where I belong!

Since Marian's main weapon is his sprint along his sharp and calculating cycling supercomputer, and he has used these successfully at Canadian nationals in Masters A, B and now C and in numerous US races, he stuck to his guns and took what was his. I'm still fighting the temptation not to post on that forum and let them know that Marian was much faster before his heart attack. If Marian would have my dull racing wit, he probably would have ripped the legs off the other guys much earlier than 300m (not 100m) from the line and then proceeded to getting beaten by some TT guy in a slow, tired, old man's sprint. I still remember this motor pace session in crazy wind we had in June. Once Arlene peeled off to wait for dropped riders, I hammered for another 5-6 km with Marian and every time I pulled off the front he flew past me going 55-60km/h. You can be fast even if you're suffering a handicap of not having regular contact to high level racing, you just need to work harder.

And little birds are tweeting that Marian has his aim set at 2010 nationals in Edmonton. Hope he won't get much stronger or I can't train with him anymore.