Travelling

     The season began in earnest this week as all that on-time, leaving on schedule garbage was thrown out the window. It's a sad sad day when I'm the first one to the meet-up.

     For this weekend we stayed in the Bush House Bed & Breakfast, which was basically right on the crit course (same course as Eastern's two years ago). It was awesome to not have to travel in the morning, to be able to wander back to get stuff/hang out before the race, etc. Huge rooms too. I hear there was a wide variety of shenanigans Friday night, but I (thankfully) slept through everything.

     Racing

     The Bellefonte crit course is awesome, but extremely hard. It's only a kilometer long, but features some non-trivial sprint hills and tight corners. I like it, but it's a killer. Steve dabbed again about halfway through the race. Probably a little bit of gravel but mostly taking it too aggressively for his balance. Mike stayed in there, kept plugging away, and I think had a good time. Justin and Reg placed 5th and 6th I believe. They were up with the lead group the whole race, modulus two UNH guys that just sped off on their own. One thing I think they have to try and do in the future is take turns covering any get-away breaks like that.

     My race went better than the previous week. I did get pulled about 15 minutes into the 60 minute race, but I think all but 10 or 12 guys got pulled. Final result was 32 out of 45 starters. Definitely the thing that killed me here was not taking enough speed through the first corner, which comes off a downhill and goes onto a much narrower street. Once you get through that, you essentially start on another downhill, and I just couldn't keep closing the gap as the group sped off down the hill. These guys can seriosly move on the least little downhill, and it's real hard to close up out of the draft.

     Sunday's circuit course was new (as far as I know). It was more technical than I had been hoping for, with a couple sharp corners onto narrowish roads. As a result of the course and the local fuzz, the officials were being real strict about pulling people once they fell out of contention. Mike was pulled pretty early but I think is slowly coming around to why that might be happenning to him (I'm think a lot of it's from not realizing he's drifting back before it's too late). Steve looked good but was obviously having trouble with the short, sharp hill on the bottom side of the course (I considered it a lot like the hill by the Mann center but with more speed going in if you swung the corner right, shorter, and without the twisty-ness). He got pulled about halfway through. Justin and Reg hung in with the leaders to take 4th and 6th in the final sprint. Reg probably could have picked up 5th if he'd jumped a little earlier or not pulled the group so close to the end (up to/through the last corner?).

     I wound up finishing 26th out of 39 starters. I was going to be pulled on the 10th lap (me and the guys ahead and behind me had been warned) when I got a flat trying to catch up to 22nd. That cost me a couple places, but I was mostly pleased. I think my big problem here was that at the start I still didn't feel real confident entering the A race, so I lined up at the back and just kind of hung there for the first lap or two. Of course, you can't do that without getting yo-yo'd right out of there, which is pretty much exactly what happenned. Somewhere along the line someone in the middle didn't close his part after a corner and the back half of the group shattered. I spent the rest of the race picking guys off here and there.

     Afterwards I felt a lot more confident about doing those races. Without the flat I would have finished pretty close to halfway up the field. I was not nearly as impressed with the guys at the back half of the group as I had been with the guys up front the week before. Perhaps the most entertaining (only because I'm pretty sure he was fine), was when the one guy nailed the curb going through the one downhill corner and just flew up and out into the grass. Fortunately, his bike didn't bounce back too far and just kind of went by along the side. There was a lot heavier braking than I expected in this race and the day before, so I think I just need to get confident, line up closer to the middle of the group, and sit there in the next couple races and see if I don't get dropped so easily. It's always harder to sit at the back.

     The other thing that suprised me a lot was how difficult it was to get guys to organize. After a bit of chugging along by myself I held up for a second to let some guys catch up, hoping we could work together. It just didn't happen. I kept saying we needed to go faster to avoid getting pulled and they just kept looking at me like I was nuts. After a while of doing more than my share of the pulls and driving the pace, I just got pissed, attacked them on the hill, and kept to myself before I got my flat (this is how I got up to 22nd then down to 26th).

     Anyway, overall I think everyone had a mostly good weekend. I felt pretty good about my two races and thought they went well. (of course, the best part was meeting a cute girl from one of the other teams, but that's neither here nor there. it's awesome doing the A races, as you have a lot more time to wander around and talk to people before your race)

     So far it's shaping up to be a good season.