Merced Criterium

Okay, so that race was hard!

I drove down this morning with Lucy to Merced.  A long drive, but the race made it worth it.

Here are flowers in the median. Pretty creative if you ask me.  

Racing at 1:30, it was probably the warmest part of the day, but still chilly at that!  A lot of the racers I noticed had arm and leg warmers.  Heck, Cal Giant had the whole deal going on!  I think it's more or less a promotion thing.  "Oh, it's sorta cold, I'll wear my flashy arm warmers and leg warmers!"  I sported the skin suit.  It hasn't failed me yet, and I feel as fast as ever (despite not having my aero wheels!).  I was warned ahead of time what might happen in the race.  The fact that Cal Giant had 15 riders today led to a reasonable assumption that a break would form and stick.  Sure enough, from the get go it was hammer hammer hammer for the whole race.

One by one the Cal Giant riders would go off the front HARD and people would follow.  It was amusing to watch (and painful at the same time), to see them fly by in red and white, and then see everyone else out of the saddle working as hard as ever to latch on and reel them in (or stick with that break).  For some odd reason I thought that to "make" the "winning break", I'd have to chase everything down.  And, sadly that's what I did.  As Jeff mentioned (and I think it's true), I was in the top 10 for the majority of the race!

The race hurt today, but I'm glad I stuck with it.  It turns out that one of those breaks DID stick!  All the sudden I hear people giving us numbers (like "8").. And after about 5 laps I hear a number and look up and think to myself "THERE IS NO ONE 8 SECONDS AHEAD!"  Look back and realize there's only like 10 of us! Holy cow, I made the break!  Lots of more hard riding, and getting yelled at for not doing work.  At that point my legs were fried and it's not that I didn't want to do work, it's that I was in instinct mode which told me "suck wheel!"  It was probably the webcore rider. He's pretty loud, and I heard him make a jab at one of the Cal Giant riders before the break stuck saying "I hope you've got a sprinter!" since none of their breaks were sticking (and they had like 15 guys to get the job done..).  Yea, so a hard race, and I managed 8th overall.  Enough to get me a shirt and $5!
Here are some pictures of the day..

Now for some sleep. I finished my reading for tonight, and have photos with April tomorrow morning before class! See ya!