Leesville and Davis Crit

Last Friday I raced Leesville Road Race, this is one of my favorite courses in NorCal. It was a bit of a strange start since I went early in a break of about 7 riders without really attacking that much. Maybe its just the difference between racing styles in the US and in Europe. I'm used to having to do a ton of accelerations before any move goes, here I followed maybe two attacks, took a couple of pulls in some groups, and suddenly we were off the front. Once we hit the rough roads 30 minutes into the race, our little group stopped working all that smoothly, but I think it was because a few of the guys were on the limit. It meant that we started getting caught by a chase group leading up to the first climb which was about 30km into the race. I didn't want to get caught before the climb and have to think about attacking again, so I took a few good pulls to make sure we stayed away until the bottom.

Once the climb started I just rode a hard tempo and ended up off the front by myself. I saw Jesse and Vince Owens chasing me from the remenants of the break but I kept going and was holding them at 15 or 20 seconds. About half way up I looked back again and saw Jesse by himself trying to come across still 15 seconds behind me. Not wanting to ride the whole race by myself I eased up just a hair so that Jesse could catch up, but I made him work to do it. I pulled him to the top of the climb and down the descent, but soon after we started working really well together and we would stay away until the finish. Given the really flat run in, I knew it was going to be a challenge dropping Jesse, so after a few short lived attacks, I concolled myself to try and sprint it out. Knowing that Jesse is the better sprinter I made sure to get behind him coming up to the line. I was trying to keep a small gap to him in front so that I could have some draft to accelerate into, and coming up to the 200m to go sign Jesse stopped pedaling briefly and I took that as my cue to jump him. I got a decent gap at first but the line wasn't coming nearly fast enough and he squeaked past me with 30 meters to go. It turns out that Velo Promo had put the 200m to go sign about 400 meters before the finish line, but with the road being so straight and flat I had a really hard time judging the actual distance to the line, and gave Jesse plenty of time to come around me. I was pretty disappointed to have messed up the sprint like that, but it was still a fun race.

Not much to say about Davis Crit, I attacked a bit during the race, but the breaks I got into never really wanted to work well to keep the gap so we would always come back after a few laps. The race slowed down in the last 3 laps as individuals battled for position as there was no team willing to take control of the race and do a lead out. I wasn't super comfortable trowing elbows while going six wide through the turns so I didn't manage to move up to the front in time and finished 18th. As such I got my entry fee back in prize money, which is more than I can say for my second place from Leesville. Atleast the Leesville tee-shirt was pretty good this year.