Mankato 2/3 crit

A quick recap:

Jared, Fred, and I agree to work together and hopefully take a win. Some strong men showed up who missed the Pro Nature Valley time cut--John Swain, Mike Anderson, and several Saskonnet U25 riders.

We attack several times after the race gets underway. Nothing really sticks. After Jared comes back about 30 min into the race, a break of five gets off the front with Swain and others. I sat up at the wrong time, and so did Fred, so we missed the winning move.

From there on out it was damage control, aka field sprint. I stuck on Anderson's wheel on the last lap, came 2nd wheel into the final sprint, but came around too late. Mike's got a great sprint, so I was happy just to be in the mix with him. 2nd in the sprint, 7th overall.

Fred got swarmed into the final corner and got 17th....and Jared got totally screwed behind a big crash on the penultimate lap. Using his uber-cool bike handling skills, he pulled a Matrix-style bunnyhop over the crashed rider and managed to stay upright. Needless to say, he wasn't in the final sprint after that.

Tommorow is the "hardest criterium in North America". More racing to come!