Monday, April 28, 2008

Tour of St. louis, Carondolet crit...

Well, after almost considering not doing this race, I was able get the urge needed to get out the door. I've felt a little blah lately about racing crits after the Hermann and Dogwood races. After some fun road races to begin the season, I just wasn't feeling like doing a crit and especially knowing that I had to go into work that night meaning another 24 hour day of being up. It's not fun to begin the work week like that. Oh well, enough bitching, the bottom line is I need a new job!!!!!!!!!! Wait, where are my priorities, I need a job to afford to bike, ok, priorities are in line again!!!

Now, back to the racing. I arrived late once again, as proven by the fact that I arrived at the registration tent a half hour before start time and there is nobody there to register me. I finally get registered and I get in a total four miles or 15 minutes of warm-up in, good enough I suppose. We've got four Fishes in the race, denny, casey, matt, and myself. Right from the gun the pace gets fast and furious as there are a lot of attacks, it seemed like it was attack after attack. A few stayed away for a while, but all were reeled back in until the final several minutes when a group of four got away. Somehow they just snuck away and seemed to have been forgotten. Now with this group away were down to several laps to go and as we come up the small hill I'm with Casey. I hammer up it like a bat out of hell determined to lead Casey to the lead group of four who are within sight. As I jumped Casey followed and we put a gap on the group. I led Casey around to the backside, and I must've pushed too hard because as Casey passed, I could not go with him. He put a bit of a gap on me and so he knew our efforts were futile so we both shut it down and got back in the peloton. During the race, I told myself to go either go outside or inside up the slight incline to get a free pass to the finish. Well, what do I do? I stay right behind a bunch of riders and before I know it it's too late to make my move to the outside. I end up finishing 22nd, Casey got 5th, and Denny was just behind me and I'm not sure where Matt finished. I have no idea how Casey slithered his way up there. I would've liked to have done Forest Park where I took 3rd place last year, but work had my name this weekend. There will be plenty more races to come.

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