After a nice morning lounging around the Swartzendruber residence, watching the tour, eating our nice spread prepared by Mark's wife/podium girl, we headed to the course early in the afternoon to put out the vibe and start with the pre-race rituals. The field was roughly the same size as the day before, but with some Nuvo guys added to the mix, as well as Brad Huff and Bryce Mead from Jelly Belly. They were on their way to Stupidweek and decided to drop in.
The course was a pretty wide open, four-corner layout with little need for braking. Just as the day before, everyone wanted to be in the break and so it took a good while to get the move established. Lots of appropriately equipped groups got off the front and had reasonable gaps, but they kept coming back. Finally we got a group of three off with Vince in it, so the rest of us were on patrol at the front. Not long after, Chris slipped into an intermediate break. Things were looking good for us and the field was starting to realize the groups were gone, so we all settled into a rhythm of eating up the remaining laps. With 3 to go they threw a $200 preme at us and Randall Coxworth grabbed me and said, "follow me". Randall is a good sprinter, masters national RR champ and former midwest stud that was staying at Drubers with us. He lead it out for me, but he was a little tired from winning the masters race earlier and pulled off a bit sooner than I had hoped. I hit the wind too early and couldn't hold on for the big bucks. I tried to take my gap from the preme sprint and keep going, but the field wasn't having it. So I was reabsorbed with 2 to go and was feeling the effort and couldn't really participate in the bunch gallop. The boys up the road ended up in 3rd and 4th. Those are pretty respectable results, but we continue to get close but not quite on the top step.
This weekend is the Bloomington Crit, not exactly an opportunity to pad my pockets with money, but local street cred' is up for grabs. It'll be great to do my local race for the first time in a couple years and catch up with some good people.
See ya out there.
1 comment:
I saw your team racing at Troy Ohio this weekend and got some pictures of them in the Pro/1/2 race, check out my website:
http://www.gattoracing.us
for some free pictures. Go under Racing Pictures, then Mid Summer 2009, they are all under there, mixed in with some other races from June and July.
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