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Monday, April 27, 2009

Wente Criterium

Finally...a nice flat crit! Only issues were the strong wind and the millions of Botts Dots (pictured).


These little suckers lined this course and when you and your lightweight rig hit them on a curve or a turn it can hop your bike and scare the crap out of you. Sometimes your line would hold you right over a line of them with riders next to you on both sides, the only thing to do is hang on, bounce down the road and pray till you can move just a bit left or right. Good times...

Race went well...I was back in my element (crit racing!), plus my recent boost in training efforts allowed me to be competitive throughout about 58 minutes of the 60 minute race. Yeah, I was toasted on the final lap and couldn't give the sprint finish what I wanted to give it.

There were MANY unsuccessful break attempts. Likely due to the wind. I went with several of these, but every one came back. The most promising of them was with 6 laps to go...we had 14 guys off the front and only about 3-4 of us working to stay away...organization sucked...the group would take the right lane of a left hand curve (i.e. the long way!)...it was messy and therefore, we got caught with about 3 to go. I tried to recover and on the final lap Jan came by and wanted me to hop on his wheel for a leadout. I just didn't have the juice at that point. I think I finished somewhere around 30th...Jan and Aaron just ahead of me somewhere around 20-25th?

2 comments:

Pat said...

I just found your bike blog by accident.
You have a great style of writing and since I just got into crit racing (I love the fury of it), I would love to read more of your escapades.

Thanks
Wendy - web owner of
clutterfreelivingnow.com

Mike Teifel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.