I had a terrible race today; and was the maddest I have ever been after a race. I hope I didn’t upset any of the spectators.
After a good warm up, I was feeling terrific. I lined up as quickly as I could at the start, but somehow managed to still be stuck in the back quarter of the pack. The 5 corner race course was narrow, and it included a 180 degree boulevard turn that required rolling through at about 3 miles an hour. So when I looked around at my position at the start, I knew that I was going to have to work hard to move up once the race began. We started. I clipped in. The guy in front of me did not. It was too tight to get around him. As 20 people went around me on all sides, the guy in front struggled to clip in, and when he finally did, I found myself at the very back of the pack. 2 laps in and I had barely moved up. And gaps were forming. I began passing people and bridging gaps, but the main field kept increasing their lead on the broken tail end of the peloton. By now we were 15 minutes into the crit and a 2 man break had formed. They had already opened up 30 or 40 seconds on the main pack, and were closing in on me and the other couple guys that were desperately trying to catch back on. We did not work together very well. One of us would pull for a half lap or so, then the next guy in line would sprint ahead, trying to bridge the ever increasing gap himself. We were 25 seconds behind the main field when we were pulled off the course; the two break away was almost a full minute ahead of the main pack at this point, and they were about to lap us. I don’t know how the race ended because I didn’t stay to watch.
KENNETT PETERSON 