Indiana and Ohio State Crit Championships

Last weekend were both states crit champs and with Indiana's being the Bloomington Crit, I obviously decided to stick around and race in front of the friends and fam. Since there was good money on Saturday in Ohio, I was the only one from my team in attendance. It's been a while since I raced solo, but with they type of number Nuvo brought to the race, I quickly remembered that you've got to go with everything, because when you miss one, it's sure to be the one that sticks. No more than 10 laps into the race I found myself standing in the pits after my first real crash of the year. I was pulling through at the front and the guy on the front didn't see me coming through and swung over and put the rear half of his bike in my front wheel. The end result was a Zipp rim that was completely separated from the Zipp hub that was still in the dropouts, not to mention I went sliding down the road for a bit. I marched to the pits pretty pissed off, got my wheel changed and realized my front derailleur was all messed up so it wouldnt go into the big ring. I was running out of time, so we half fixed it and I got back in. After some attacking and some chasing it became apparent that nothing was getting away and I went to sit and wait for the sprint. In the mean time my bike started dropping the chain regularly and got to practice shifting my bike back into the big ring via yanking the cable at the downtube. The sprint came, I didn't get in the right spot and ended up 4th. Nuvo rode well for Hubbell and he took the win and all the local street cred that comes with it.

Post race I went home and took the dreaded post crash shower. It sucked, but I got all Tube-Gauzed up and headed out to catch up with all the people that were in town for the occasion. Minus the wreck, it was a pretty good time.



Sunday was The Ohio State Crit Champs in Miamisburg Ohio. We had a all our guys in attendance, plus a few of the local team members and even the title sponsor. It turns out that the team really didn't need me much the day before and went 1,2,4 and 10 on the day. Kenda and Roadhouse didn't want to see that happen again, so we figured we would have a good fight on our hands. We raced aggressively to try to get a break up the road with the numbers in our favor, but it wasnt to be. The race was only 70 minutes and we couldn't seem to tire out the guys who were gluing it all together. So it was gonna be a field sprint whether we liked it or not. Kenda got their leadout together and was doing there thing for the last few laps and we didn't really get organized as a team, as a result they were on the front with 2 corners to go and their man on the front laid it down, taking some of their guys down and causing a bunch of us to have to stop in the corner. I was sitting 5th wheel and wasn't one of the lucky ones. John Puffer and Kirk Albers from Roadhouse got through cleanly or at least clean enough to go 1-2 and Chris and Jeremy from our team managed to find their was through it from farther back and take 4th and 5th. Not really what we were looking for, but I think it is an issue we could hav avoided if we had gotten organized and gotten to the front. It's a learning experience for us as a team, but it's just never fun when you don't execute. I think our leadout/communication skills will improve once we get more races together as a team.


Photo By Jeffrey Jakucyk

This weekend is my homie Chris' wedding on Saturday and then we're heading up to the Chicago Crit on Sunday. I would love to get a nice chunk of that 25k they're giving away up there. Wish me luck!