#285: Cuba RR
Waking up on Sunday morning, I wondered how the road race would play out. I knew that I needed to get a 1st place or at least beat the guy that scored a 2nd place in the crit, to take home the top spot in the ominium. I felt pretty good, the criterium the day before didn’t really tear up my legs that much.
The race started out fast down the narrow roads out to the loop. By the time we got out to the loop, 2 were off the front (Memphis’ Clark Butcher riding for Herring and a Tria market guy). At the end of the 1st lap, 20-22 miles into the race the generally slow pace of the race had their lead out to over 2 minutes (2:30, I heard). The race ended up being fairly sedate for the most part except for some spirited attacks, especially uphill. By 40+ miles in (2nd lap), the lead was cut down closer to a minute. At the end of the 3rd lap, entering the connector to the finish, the gap was 30 seconds and they were in sight. The catch occurred with 1 mile to go as the field ramped the speed up to the uphill lead-in to the flat finish.
I knew that I had to beat Lackey (Tria) to get the omnium win and was watching Simpson (VeloCity) as well. I charged up the side of the field on the uphill closing down the gap to Lackey and going back Simpson… As it leveled out Simpson came around and I stopped closing to Lackey. 3rd on the day it would be. 2nd in the omnium for me. I didn’t really notice how I fared overall in the sprint (scored separately, so I couldn’t tell from the results).
It ended up being a good weekend of racing to get geared up for Oak Ridge next weekend. And the payout was good, so it ended up paying for itself and then some. Unfortunately, that has been a rare occurrence for me this year.
