okay, folks, i'm a little late on this one, but here's last week's race update:

 

12 feb 2006

st. valentine's day massacre

90 minute crit

 

new course from last year.  start/finish on top part of a hill, take a right into a downhill chicane, continue down a bit, then a sweeping right into an uphill and into the finish.  not a super technical course - the corners were wide - but it was a fairly hard course compared to the usual simple 4 corner crit.

 

one of the major domestic pro teams showed up for this race, and we all knew it was just going to be a painfest.  the first 45 minutes were averaged at 30 miles per hour - that's pretty quick.  anyway, we were all surviving but i'd have to say my highlight of the day came at about 8 laps or so left in the race.  i was taking the inside line into the corner into the uphill.  all of a sudden a kid from the echelon-santa barbara team sees a hint of daylight and dives the corner on my inside.  i let him by, but then he fails to hold his line and bumps his left thigh into my handlebars.  this gives me a bit of the wobbles, but it's okay.  just an idiot kid.  like 3 seconds later and we're getting up the hill.  ivan dominguez (one of the top pro sprinters) flies by me on the right, hovers right in front of the kid, looks him in the eye, and then flicks his back wheel into the kid's front wheel *really* hard saying, "don't f-in do that again!"  after that a couple guys yelled out, "hey ivan, this isn't cuba!  cut it out!"  yeah, wild - total road rage.  the kid was lucky to not totally crash.  me, i was just glad that i wasn't the one who screwed up.

 

anyway, that was the major excitement.  we went into the final 2 laps, and i was feeling okay - getting up for the sprint - when i just totally bonked.  little homer - on shift at the mucha power station - must have decided it was the appointed time for a little coffee/donut break - and that just sucked.  we were into the bell lap and i was just losing spots right and left.  finished in like 35th.  blah.  didn't eat enough breakfast - how could i do that?  more pancakes, please.