2 races in 2 days with 1 set of old legs can make for a difficult combination. Today the team roll: "Masters Caravan" headed south to Nelsonville for the Star Brick Criterium. Our masters included "Chairman" Fred Parks, "Marco" Corroto, "Cadillac" George Conti and me. We had a pretty good sized masters field which included the Mighty Scott Young who has been my racing comrade through most of the Torelli Spring Series.
The finishing stretch was all brick and it was showing its age during the race. We all spent the first several laps working to find the smoothest line with the least amount of bouncing on our bikes.
The Masters started one minute behind a pretty large 3-4 field and we kept them in our sights for several laps. At one point I thought we might even bridge up to them until they finally dropped the hammer and moved on down the road. Our race was pretty uneventful with your typical criterium jumps and attacks until about halfway through the race when George made a strong attack off the front. Fred jumped and bridged up to George and we had the makings of a nice breakaway. Marco and I worked to control the field and several laps later Fred drifted back to us.
George stayed off the front for a long time and it looked like his break might stick until the 3-4's came through our group and ended up pulling our field up to George. Some cat and mouse took place until we were down to about 3 laps to go. At this point Scott made a big jump off the front and it took everything I had to pull him back. I burned some of my few remaining matches to get back on Scott's wheel and coming into the homestretch a rider in an OU jersey attacked the sprint and I didn't have enough in the legs to come around him. I ended up in 2nd with Marco and George and right on my wheel. I was a bit disappointed and felt like I let the team down but gave it everything I had.
With the Spring series finished I have a week or so to recharge my batteries and prepare for the rest of the season.
No comments:
Post a Comment