Steve and Kevin.

Dear Reader,

It's March and people are getting the itch to get racing again. Bike racers can only sustain themselves on rides and trainer intervals so much. Sure enough it was 50 degrees and raining, so of course I was signed up to do a couple of training crits. Rain, and Road Racing in a meaningless crit, what could possibly go wrong?

Super fun day.
35+/45+ race
Maybe 25 starters. A couple of moves early that split the field. Maybe 9 of us got clear. God I'm stupid, it would have been so much smarter to realize there was a split and not be in it.  As there was 9 of us, there was a lot dynamics, people going, chasing, all that good stuff. With about one and a half to go, we all kinda sat up and looked around at each other. It was the first time in the 45 minute race, that it let up for a few seconds. Seriously felt like I was bleeding out my eyes.  Someone commented, "you know we could just ride in the last part of the race like this..." Wade announced before I could get it out of my mouth, "that would be really awesome" And then the attacking started. Dude from Pro Pedals got clear. I sat up with 200m to go.
1234 race
combined the 3/4 field and 123 field. 3 dudes took off in the first 50 feet and were totally gone. The rest of the race was much more mellow/manageable than the old man race. Not a ton of folks working together, and no real chase. Big groupetto riding together. With maybe 5 to go Warren from Alliance looked over at this kid from Cadence and said, "dude are you going to pull through or what?" Warren and the kid from cadence were both  totally working all day. I chirped up, "you know I've been sitting on both your wheels, and you've been working really hard, while I have been hiding out. Perhaps we should yell at the guys behind us?" Everyone laughed.

Chuck took a couple of nice flyers today.

Dude from cadence attacked with one to go and stayed clear to finish ahead of the field sprint. Good on him, he was working really hard. I sat up for the sprint again, not that I would have been a factor or anything. Fun day. Rainy, Nasty day. I was destroyed.

Best Part of the entire day was this dude who I think must have hand washed his shorts last night and not rinsed them too well. With all the rain and total epicness, his shorts were foaming over with suds, all over his seat, his shorts, down his bike. It was awesome. At one point I was on his wheel and the headwind blew a sud over my shoulder. Totally rad.

Thanks to Chuck and Sophie for riding over with me, it was great to have company.

thanks to Sophie for the photos too.

thanks for reading.

respect
fm