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friday was SUPPOSED to go to the twin cities with tator but he got stuck in cedar rapids so we stayed the night at beavs. ate big chunks of meat, played guitar, and passed out. saturday morning me and tator split that scene and pronto and drove up to mankato for the nature valley grand prix races. they had a couple amateur races and so we got to race together for the cat 2/3 crits
-----Mankato Crit-----
this was actually a very boring course. dead-flat L-shaped crit (5 right turns, 1 left). one long straight section before a right hand that was ~100 meters from the finish line. something like 40 guys or so started the race. i felt like shit the first 20 minutes of the race and was pretty scared...maybe due to my crash-streak as of late...so i tried out dominic's tactic (sit in the very back and then do something at the very end). nothing ever really happened in that race until about 4 laps to go. 2 guys get a small gap (maybe 5 seconds or so) but they maintained it for 2 laps. at the start of 2 laps to go i started moving up, on the long straight section before the finish i picked up the pace on the left side of the pack (never really attacked) and hit the front and another guy attacked on the right side of the pack. the two of us hooked up and bridged the gap by the line for 1lap to go. the two other guys were pretty tanked and the pack was chasing real close still (prolly less than 5 seconds now) so the other guy takes the front and leads to the long straight section where i pull through with about half kilometer to go...WAY to early for the effort i was putting out but was just hoping to keep it up enough to finish top 5 since the pack was nearly on us...
i hit the final corner leading it, and stood up to sprint completely anticipating someone to come around me (since thats what happened to me in every sprint last week with clark and chris) but somehow i managed to hold on and take the win!
i totally couldn't believe it. i felt like shit the first half, sat at the back the entire race and only did work the last 2 laps...guess dominic's tactic works...maybe i should try that more :)
that night we stayed at mario's in a very shady neighborhood :)
----stillwater crit-----
sunday morning was the crit that everyone thinks of when they talk about nature valley. you can think of it like this...a hill that hurts just as bad as snake but steeper and not as long (heard its over 20% which i believe easily if not more) then it levels out for a little and then a hill like muscatine melon city crit...absolutely painful. after that the downhill with a few turns and a long straight downhill that we hit close to 40mph bombing down into 2 imediate right hand turns still downhill with bumps int he corner that would throw your bike all over the place. seriously this had to be the hardest/most technical crit course i have ever done...this seriously makes snake alley not seem as hard anymore.
so yea, me and tracy warmed up for a good while and then hit the start line...but we didn't start for 20 minutes! there was a car on the course that they were trying to tow and kept telling us "5 more minutes" so everyone just stood there...so we started way late and any warm up was basically nullified. then they shortened our race to only 30 minutes because of the delay...oh well
started off the race pretty decent but then started getting tanked after about 4 laps or so. tracy was feelin it too. somehow i managed to stay with the lead 10 group the entire race. the last lap down the hill was absolutely insane...the group was flying down the hills, and through the final corner the front guy had way too much speed and washed out and went into the barrier. i came through the corner too much speed and couldn't slow in time to get on the inside of them and went down too...and so my crash streak lives on :( but this time i was able to get up and finish up the hill and hold on for 7th overall. heard something like 60 started and only 40 finished.
overall a pretty good weekend considering it was my first time racing with cat 2 guys like that.
tracy got 15th place...which was the last paid spot...they wrote him a check for 5 dollars...that guy is rollin in the big bucks now
then we stuck around and watched amanda race in the pro women's field. she had an awesome race! kristin armstrong road away from the field but amanda finished in the first chase pack of about 13 women and she ended up 25th overall on the GC...way to go!!!!
they tried talking me into going to colorado with them for a while but im a pansy and dont want to get fired even though i dont like my job
maybe i should just suck it up and go out there...
mountains?????
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