Not a bad week of racing… 1st on the Track, 3rd in a crit, and 2nd in the sprint competition in a long 165k RoadRace.
Friday was the opening race night night the international Velodrome at Bloomer Park. Lots of Fans came out in Support of the racing that will happen every Friday night on the Track in Rochester Michigan. It’s great when you get people banging on the boards, and chearing you on. It’s always nice to get a win where people look like they enjoyed a good night of hard racing.
Saturday I meet Dave Byer and we drove to Mount Pleasent also in Michigan for a Pro 1/2 weekend. 60k Crit on Saturday, and a 165k road race on Sunday where Pete was going to make the drive out and race as well. The crit wen as good as it could with only 2 Jetfuel riders in the field. We covered most of the moves, and Dave chases back some key breaks that we were not able to get in. In the end it was a field sprint, and I finished 3rd behind a Kenda Pro rider, and Panthers rider. Paul Martin was close on my tail in 4th…
Sunday, we had Pete… he was key. The plan was for Pete to win, get me up there for the overall 2 day GC, and only go for sprints if It looked easy to win. Well the first sprint was worth more points than the other, and I was in the front. I knew if I won the first sprint, I’d have a good chance to win the sprint competition, so I jumped, got a gap, and held off the other to take maximum points. right after that sprint the break went, and with only 2 other guys, we missed out on the break. We were left to chase. Unfortunatly, we were the only riders interested in chasing. and we only had 3 guys… our 20k chase brought back the break somewhat, but we were killing ourselves… we let other take up the chase, but the gap got larger, also, I saw the win in the sprint competition slip away to guys up front. With 40k to go, I got into a break with another panther rider. we were away for about 25km, but got realed in about 8km from the finish. The Priority Health riders brought us back, but that destroyed those riders, and half of them got dropped in the final sprint. In the field sprint for 8th I worked off the Panther team to get a lead out. Pete was also trying to clear out a way for me to get through. The Panther guys let Paul Martin get away 600m from the line, so I had to go! 500m long sprints are not fun. I held off the field until 10m before the line, where one of the Panthers went by me. I finished 9th in the race, but managed to salvage 2nd overall in the Sprint competition and 4th overall. It was a good effort by the small team we had. Kenda Pro/Bissel/Panthers who all had at least double the numbers, so it was a good accomplishment. Doing well in the races, in the sprints and in the GC was hard, but we seamed to have good legs this weekend.