Walnut Grove

Ladd 7th, Me 8th, Brian 11th. I felt pretty good today but still coughing a lot.

Today's race was 55 miles through 2 laps of a very hilly 27 mile circuit. Ladd, Brian and I did the Cat3's. Smallish field (40 riders or so). Toby S. and Brian H. were there too.

100m into the race we get to a stop sign...lead car goes left and the 20 y.o. brainiac's at the front go right. The moto official was laughing his ass off. So the field does a big U turn...

Half way through the first lap Brian gets away with one other dude. He was out for a long time (20 miles?) and I rode a lot of easy tempo on the front of the field. I think he had up to a minute gap. At one point Ladd rolled up to the front and I gave him a gentle push on the hip cuz I wanted him to do some easy tempo...instead he thought I meant attack and he took off with 2 others. It was actually a good move and they got a decent gap. I won't say I was "blocking" cuz I hate blocking but I rode a lot near the front and got yelled at a few times. ;-)

Late in the 2nd lap everything came back together and things started getting hard. Ladd was not having a good day on the hills (give him a break, he's 180 lbs) so my goal was to make sure he got to the finish in one piece with the main group. He'd get gapped then I would pace him over the climb then drill it to close. Over the last big climb a group of 8 or so had 5 seconds and they were drilling it...I buried myself to close that gap. The problem was that there was a roller right after the catch and I had to dig real deep to stay with the group. That really hurt.

The sprint was pretty bad for me...poor position and too many matches burnt earlier. Ladd went with another dude with half a mile to go but it didn't work out. I was outta gas and ended up finishing right behind him. I made $25...not bad for 2.5 hours of work.