Tour of Elk Grove races.....

I knew it had been a while since I last updated this, but I didn't think it was this long. The last race I did was back in St. Louis at the Tour de Grove. Two days of racing in the St. Louis heat. My legs and form were just coming around back then and I was feeling pretty good. I got a 25th place on the second day which was a three mile circuit race with a ton of turns. It reminded me of Soulard, but bigger. While it wasn't a great result I was happy with it since it was a Cat 2/3 race with a lot of strong 2's. I was 10th among the 3's though. That was my last race until this past weekend. I spent five weeks of basically riding tempo and doing long training rides, barely any high intensity stuff. Work seemed to get in the way and I wasn't sure how my fitness was going to be going into the weekend. Saturday was the Cat 3 race. It was on a six turn circuit with a tight 180* turn, but then the rest was super fast. With my fitness being what it was my goal was to just finish with the pack. I told myself if I just made it through the first 20 minutes I'd be ok. Well, I made it through, but I went through some ridiculous pain. I made it through to the end of the race, I was about middle of the field. I'd say there were around 60 guys racing. We averaged 26.6 for the race. Sunday was the Cat 3/4 masters race. I was feeling pretty good about myself for this race after the day before. I though I could only improve on the previous days result. This race went pretty smooth for me. I didn't go through the pains I did the day before, but I still had to work pretty hard. There was one incident though that I wasn't too happy about. I was making my way through the pack and I clearly had a hole and grabbed it. I guess the other guy thought differently and felt the need to speed up and bury a shoulder into me. I did all I could to stay upright as I was now leaning into another guy on my left. It would've been really ugly to go down where it happened in the middle of the pack. I yelled at him and so did a couple other guys. The last thing I'd expect from a masters race is some a!@hole to get all worked up over me grabbing the hole. The race continued and I found myself feeling pretty good. I got in a good position on the last lap. I was around 8-10 guys back as we cooked it around the last corner. I had so much momentum that instead of staying on the guys wheel in front of me I drifted to the outside a little. That was a big mistake. I found myself out of the paceline and directly into the wind. Instead of sprinting out of that group I basically had to sprint from that point just to maintain my position. I eventually swallowed up at the line. I think I finished around 20th place. I'm not sure the exact placing since I wasn't on the results sheet. I propably got behind some dude again........I just checked the official scoresheet from the website and I finished in 19th. I wonder how much I missed out on since it paid top 20. I was able to finally get some race footage with my camera. I had no way to mount it on the handlebars and I wasn't liking it mounted on my helmet. I crudely taped it right on top of may garmin. It worked, although I couldn't use the info, but who needs it for a crit. I've never done the Tour of Elk Grove, but it was an NRC race and by far the largest purses for the pro's and paid 20 deep for my races. The racing was good and now that I'm living up here I'll put this weekend on my calendar. I was surprised nobody from our elite team was up here, but I guess the state crit championships was this weekend.