March 21, 2010
Crits this weekend; not my cup of tea. We traveled to Richmond for two days of short and fast racing around the Virginia State Fairground. The upside was beautiful sunshine and temperatures in the seventies – Hello Spring!
Saturday’s course included no less than four 180° turns at one end of the course. In reality, I shouldn’t complain, since these pedal-grinders provided a perfect opportunity for resting in an otherwise lung-busting race. Nevertheless, the constant sound of clicking pedals on pavement was disconcerting. I made some poor choices early in the race and got dropped from the lead group, finishing second in a group of six for 20th on the day.
For Sunday’s race, the cones were arranged in a slightly less absurd configuration with only two u-turns. The result was a much faster pace with less opportunity for resting. I stayed near the back of the field for most of the race until a crash in front sent me, brakes locked, rolling over the legs of a UVA rider (sorry!). I stayed upright and managed to roll to the pit for my free lap, rejoining the field with five laps to go. I hung on till the finish and managed to actually out-sprint (who knew?) a few riders for 15th.
Props from the weekend go to Justin Crawford for riding away from the field to an impressive 2nd in the A race, and Matt Docking for attacking the B race early and holding on for 3rd. Mike Breitenbach won the B field sprint for 4th, and Justin Morrison took 4th in both C races.
In other news, bike racing and blogging are more fun than schoolwork. Sadly, they don’t take precedent, and I haven’t been able to devote as much time as I’d like to the fun stuff. I’m not sure the William & Mary video will happen any time soon, but I’ll work on putting together this weekend’s video awesomeness in the next few days. Stay tuned…. (edit – don’t get your hopes up…)
Oh, and I took 408 pictures this weekend (really), which will take some time to sort. I have quite a few from other weekends, which will also be posted somewhere at some point. Stay tuned for that too…
Finally, for those of you who can’t get enough collegiate bike racing (and who can blame you?), I’ve posted links to blogs by the rest of the VT team, which can be found on the left column of this page under “Blogs.”
Thanks to Justin Crawford for the following pictures:
fiddleharpa 