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San Ardo RR 9/4/04
5th Place
Cat 4
Field 40+
Teammates: Tyler
Overall, this was a very fun race. Technically this was my first seniors race, so I was still getting used to riding in a big field. Tyler got dropped at the start since he was sitting on the toilet, (more on that from Tyler later). Tyler remarkably was able to close a two minute gap on the field to catch back up halfway through lap one. There were a few attacks throughout the race, but Tyler and the some of the Alto Velo guys were able to keep the race under control. Luckily, I didn't get a flat 15 minutes into the race like the weekend before at winters, and I was feeling great that day, so I had a feeling I would get a good result. Halfway through the last lap, I found myself in the top 10-15 places in the group, trying to avoid the headwind and do as little work as possible. One guy got off the front with just a little over 1K to go, We caught him with 800M. I found myself second wheel right as we had turned onto the finishing straight, in retrospect, a little too early to be that far up in the sprint. I started drop back to 3-4 position so I wouldn't be the perfect lead out for someone else. Many riders got dropped on the slight preceding hill, so there was basically a widely spread out field sprint. Two riders flew by the last 50M to the finish, placing the top two. I was able to snag 5th. I learned a valuable lesson in this race though. Don¹t stop pedaling until you cross the finish line. I stopped pedaling with about 10ft to go and ended dropping. back a place from 4th to 5th. If I had just put in ONE pedal stroke, I could of got fourth. Overall though, a very fun race and a good learning experience. Plus we parked next to Levi Leiphiemer
Livermore Hills RR Championships
7/17/04
3rd Place
Jr. 15-16
Field : 15
Teammates : Charles, Tyler, Peter, Gaelan
First lap started off pretty slow. We decided before the race I would primarily try to mark Blake while Tyler and Charles would help mark Collin. We tried some attacks throughout the second lap but had no success. Charles seemed to like to pull the group, which almost killed Tyler and I, but we slowed down a bit towards the end. By the end of the second lap, we were in the lead group of five which consisted of Blake, Collin, Charles, Tyler and I. Collin accelerated a little and starting zigzagging and doing figure eights in front of us. We had no clue what he was doing, but then he decided to go for it. That was the last time we saw him during the race. We attempted a chase but it was far from successful. Charles pulled extremely hard for one whole lap, without any of us taking turns pulling, and he eventually sat up. Throughout the remaining three laps, it was Blake, Tyler and I. What happened next was due to a failure in team tactics. Tyler and I didn't even attempt to attack Blake in any of the remaining laps, and with him being the stronger rider, well...you know what happened. Blake broke away with about 1.5K's to go and Tyler nor I could catch him. Overall, not a very good race team wise but we did get a top three result.
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