San Francisco Twilight Criterium

I manned up, put a band-aid on my chin and strapped on the helmet for the San Francisco Twilight Criterium last Saturday evening.


I was already pre-registered and my Doc gave me the OK on Thursday while taking my stitches out...I believe his exact words were, "You can't do any more damage." I think what he meant was that my injuries wouldn't get worse if I went down again. The way I figure is that since these injuries do not impair my movement, they should not impair my racing...injured or not, a crash would be a crash and I'm not ready to give up racing.

There were a ton of us and a ton of the Fusion guys. As my teammate, Aaron, put it: "The start line looked like a scene from West Side Story."


Speaking of Aaron:

Yep, 2nd place!

So there were a lot of attacks on this course, but nothing stuck and it ended up a sprint finish. We had a few guys off the front throughout the race and every time there was another team off the front, our guys stepped up and chased it down. Aaron and I were designated to hang back and chill...waiting for the sprint finish. Unfortunately, about half way through the race there was a fairly large crash that took out a few of my teammates, so we lost some fire power. Heal fast guys!

During the final lap I was about 2 or 3 positions behind Aaron, which was a pretty good position. I felt a small "slow down" on the back stretch during this lap and thought that I should attack here and just go for it. I hesistated and didn't go (which is still haunting me). Coming into turn 3 (of 4) we were too wide and I had to make a quick exit up to the sidewalk and then back down at the next driveway. This bummed me out because I lost my position and was a bit too far back. Luckily, Aaron is riding super-strong lately and rocked out a 2nd place finish.

I think I ended up somewhere in the top 20, but I still haven't seen the results posted. Why does it take promoters so long to post the results?? I hate that.