3.9.06

St. Louis -- The Gateway to end-of-the-season crits

Busted......

The last crit season on the year is in St Louis this weekend. You know what I've concluded about bike racing? It's fun for like 3 hours total a day, and the rest we spend being lazy and doing nothing, or eating. I wouldn't change a thing--especially since school starts the day I get back to reality.

Driving, navigating, following directions...none of those really apply to Fred and I. EVERY SINGLE DAY, regardless of where or when the race is, we'll get lost for between 1 hour and 3 hours. In the car, driving towards nowhere, not very quickly, trying to get angry but realizing we have nothing better to do anyways. On the brightside, however, we've gotten to sample some new resturants getting lost around a big city. Let's say that we've found the BIGGEST subs you can order as one portion.

As for the racing--it's somewhere between a regional race and a Superweek crit at 90 min long. Hard, but possible to get a solid top 5 or top 10 result. But so far, bad luck has prevailed.

Friday night was a kick-ass scary twilight crit...under the lights starting at 9:30pm. After the usual 3 crashes in the opening laps, I thought I was clear. WRONG....with 3 to go I get caught in one and have to chase back on HARD. I make it back up to the lead for the final sprint, and made it in the money, but I was dead and had no sprint left in my legs. 19th.

Saturday was a weird crit--starting at 7:30pm, we transitioned into a twilight crit during the race. Sketchey, no doubt! Luckily this was a pretty difficult course with 2 significant 30 sec climbs each lap to help string out the field. I made it in good position with one lap to go--and then, even in the front of the field, had to pull some curb-hopping evasive maneuvers around a crash with one to go. Needless to say, I chased back on, but couldn't contest in the sprint. 20-something.

Now that the bad luck is aside, it's time to rock and roll. Since I'm at the gateway to the west, it seems only fair to follow this up with a yeh-haw!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, what happened to Fresh and Jared, is it just you and Fred?

Ryan Baumann said...

Jared is racing with VMG....not in St Louis.

Fresh is racing at Gatway for IS Corps.

Still racing cross Jordan, but this is one of the last crits of the year for sure