Red Trolley Classic Criterium

65 minutes

 

Pretty hard course - long downhill followed by a really steep little hill with bit of flat after that.  This race usually ends in a breakaway, but not today - today was a field sprint.  Beautiful weather for the race - partly cloudy and in the upper 60's or so.  The race was going fine - there were plenty of attacks, but nothing really stayed off the front for very long at all.  Not so much boredom in this race - it was difficult enough that you had to concentrate the whole time plus you had to work up the hill each lap, etc.  That and there was one move I thought might go somewhere that I followed, but it turned out to be nothing.  Oh, well.  Anyway, it was shaping up to be a field sprint.  I was getting into position with 5 laps to go, and was holding my wheel just fine, but things were pretty hairy.  The peloton would bunch here and there and things were getting pretty precarious.  I was latched on to the back of the SDBC sprint train - not a bad place to be - and people wanted my spot - I had to throw some elbows and nearly knock a guy into the curb to keep them from muscling in.  But that's just what it's all about.  Either you blink or they do.  It's your job to make them back down every time.  Chicken.  That's just the game.  So it was just getting at 2 laps to go, and a guy comes in hard from my right side to take the wheel I'm following.  I'm not budging, and even if I was, there's nowhere on my left to go.  The dude's back wheel gets right up in my front wheel, and my front skewer (holds the wheel in) rips out a bunch of his spokes (That'll show him).  Fortunately, both of us are still upright - he's out of the race since his back wheel is gone - I lose about 20 spots due to the loss of speed and momentum.  I'm still in it, though, but there's not really too much of a chance.  We're heading into the bell lap, and there's just simply no time to get back up in position.  The sprint happens and a Polish guy wins the race.  Turns out the SDBC train (they took 1st, 3rd, and 4th last Sunday) wasn't the place to be - they didn't get anything higher than 14th.