UCD Road Race, MA
Teammates- Julian
Placing- 13th
Distance- 60 miles
Placing- 13th
First it's 5 miles of gravel and now it's a 7 mile climb. This course was no fun let me tell you. It basically consisted of going up a 7 mile climb to a turn a round point at the top and then descended that same climb to the finish, right where all the cars are parked. To top it off, the roads were narrow and had cars going up and down it, endangering the racers on both sides of the road. Regardless, this one put me in the wattage cottage. I stayed with the pack on the 1st time up. Second time up I got dropped but worked with the 4 others to bridge back up. 3rd time up the climb I took a hard pull at the front to keep things intact cause I figured Julian would have a better chance being the skinny climber that he is (this proved to be true). Eventually Adam Switters from UCD soloed off the front for the win. A stanford guy and I rode the rest of the 3rd and 4th time up the climb together sharing the workload. Because of the nature of the course though, and we managed to pick up and pass some of our fellow dropees. We eventually caught another Stanford guy right at the turn around on the last time up and he worked with us to get down to the finish line. Coming into the last 2K or so they started to attack me. I somehow managed to cover all of except for the last one, but I still managed to hold off the other stanford guy. Just finishing this race got me 13th place, pretty ridiculous. 5200 ft of climbing is no fun.
UCD Crit
Teammates: Julian, Alex
Place: 10th
Distance: 60 min
The legs weren't feeling super fresh today after that little effort I put in for the road race. The course was really sketchy with narrow roads and turns with cars still parked on the street. A break of 3 got up the road and no one seemed to keen on chasing it. Alex did a hard turn at the front setting me up perfectly for a counter attack. Unfortanutely, nobody came with me and I was eventually reeled back in. We got really close to catching the break but no one seemed to interested to keep working. Julian and I both put in a couple more attacks and missed out on Switters bridging up to the break solo. That left it to the field sprint. I tried to get good positioning but there was a lot of bumping going around. I had to swerve around a couple of riders coming out of the last corner and managed to pass some more people as I started my sprint. The camera wasn't working so not totally sure on my placing but pretty good race regardless.
It was nice to hear all the cheering and to have Coach Scott there to keep everyone on track.
