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Hot… and tough. The Cat 3 road race was 4 laps of hilly 15 mile course. The way the laps were run, we got to do the finishing climb 4x before the final time. I spent a good portion of the race near the front and some time off the front, but also found myself in trouble a couple of times. The worse time was on the 3rd lap? where I slid to the back due to some attacks at the front. On dropping back, my teammate Aaron Parker was also in trouble,… we paced back to the field and caught on when the field slowed. That was pretty much the entire race, people would attack and the responses would get weaker and weaker and the general speed would drop.

In the end, there was a small group of 4 about 20-30 seconds off the front and 3 of us in the field behind (Bryan Marshall, Aaron, and myself). On the finishing rollers, M&B rider Bryant Funston jumped hard and several were able to follow (including Aaron). I was not able to… Unfortunately, Aaron couldn’t hold on and locked up going up the steep pitch after the feed zone area (about 1 mile to go). I ended up passing him, but couldn’t manage better than 15th place. Bryan and Aaron finished a few places back in 17th & 18th. What a tough day.

Later on, we had a rolling to flat 10 mile TT to contest. My legs felt bad and I only managed about a 25:50 (self-timed). I have no idea where that puts me, but I would guess about mid-field…although the TT was only contested by those that are more serious about it (about half the field).

Photo from Bart Nave photography. Visit his site for more thumbnails…

Tomorrow is the blacktop parking lot crit at Titans stadium. It promises to be hot at the 1 pm start time….