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Land Park Criterium
3/17/07
Place: 13
Field: Someone told me 47
I went into this race hoping that I would at least get a top ten, but things don't always go as one would plan. I started the day with a relatively good breakfast. I had a Bagel and bread and two bowls of cheerios about three hours before the race. Probably should have avoided the milk though as it has a tendency to make me ill.
Got to the race with about an hour and a half for warmup. I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to park anywhere near the course so that was a bit of a problem. So I got myself registered but I wasn't able to get on my trainer. The fact that I couldn't warmup on my trainer was a combination of other problems. I decided to warmup around the course and rode around maybe three or four times. Not the most ideal warmup as I couldn't work the heart rate as much as I wanted.
I got to the line after my warm up and was honestly shocked to see the number of Davis riders who were present. Of course Taylor was there so that meant it wasn't going to be an easy race. The pace started pretty high. Maybe it was my lack of warmup or something else, but I wasn't sure I would make it. After the first three laps I settled into low AT/ high ME and got comfortable. After these first few laps there were a bunch of breakaway attempts. I forget who was in them but there were about three or four breakaways in the first 30 minutes. The problem was that no one in the field was chasing. I was too tired to really do anything. I didn't want to go chase then blow myself up early in the race. I couldn't tell if the other riders were too tired or too lazy to chase. Eventually people got fed up and chased the breaks down. The field was all together for about two more laps. After that Taylor got away in a break with another AMD rider. Still no one chased. I was too tired to drive the pace but I felt like others weren't. With about two laps to go Davis finally started blocking for Taylor. The final lap the pace got high but the break lasted and Taylor won. I moved up a bit on the last lap and thought I would be able to move up in the z turns and on the final turn. I got stuck behind a slower rider on the z turn and had to make up for this on the next turn. From the final turn I sprinted as best as I could but I had put myself in such a bad position that I could only get 13th.
Overall not a horrible performance, but I really wanted the top ten. It's okay though, I'll let Nick and Zach make fun of me for a little while longer.
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