I’ll just post Brian’s race report here, so you can enjoy his recap!<\/p>\n
My race was insane. The call-ups were like a "who’s who" of criterium
\nracing. Kirk O’Bee, current US Pro crit national champ, Hilton Clarke,
\nIvan Dominguez, Frank Pipp, Rashaan Bahati, and a bunch more. Toyota
\nUnited, Healthnet, and Bissell all had their A teams — but overall
\nthe race was actually kind of small with less than 60 riders. I had an
\nOK start on the second row with the guy just in front and to the left
\nstruggling to get into his pedals. I was in about 15th going through
\nthe first two corners. The pace was not too, too fast but before I had
\na chance to attack for the first lap prime, somebody else did and
\neverybody gunned it going down the hill into the third corner. I was a
\nlittle nervous not having had a chance to pre-ride the course and I
\nlost ground going into that corner coming out of it in probably 30th
\nor worse. By the time we made it around two more times I found myself
\ngetting closer and closer to the back of the pack. Ivan Dominguez was
\nhanging out back there, too and I rode near him for the first few laps.<\/p>\nThe pace was very fast and strung out everywhere except that third
\ncorner, which was slower on some laps — but there were definitely
\nlaps where we took that corner at over 30mph. I wouldn’t be surprised
\nif our average speed for the race was close to 30mph — I’ll have to
\ndownload the data when we get home to check. Even with the fast pace,
\na group of 10 riders got away on about the tenth lap. Let’s just say I
\nwasn’t in any position to try to go with them. In fact I was hanging
\non for dear life at the back of the group — which I think was
\nactually harder than riding near the front considering the whiplash
\neffect of turns 2 and 4. All the major teams were represented — but
\nthe pace didn’t slow down right away. We went insanely fast for the
\nnext 5 laps or so and then right when I was near the snapping point,
\nthe field basically sat up between turn 1 and 2 and then basically
\ncruised the rest of the lap at 25mph — which was just enough time to
\ngive me a chance to recover and actually move up to about a mid-pack
\nposition going through the S\/F.<\/p>\nI struggled some with Turn 3 as people would pass me going into the
\ncorner and then it would be hard to carry momentum through it. When
\nthe break finally lapped us, the pace shot up again and there were
\nseveral counter attacks so the pace would be fast on some laps and
\nthen slower on other laps. Kristine says they were throwing out primes
\non every other lap during that part of the race, but I was
\nconcentrating hard on positioning, etc… and didn’t even notice them.
\nWith about 20 laps to go, the pace shot up again as the big teams
\nstarted positioning for the final sprint.<\/p>\nBut then with 12 or 13 laps to go, I was somewhere in the top 20 going
\naround Turn 2 and the people at the front sat up. I saw this as a
\ngreat opportunity to attack to move my position up — but when I
\nattacked and the front was still going slow, I found myself with a
\nhuge gap on the downhill. Taking Turn 3 by myself was a lot more fun
\nthan trying to negotiate it in the pack. I had a pretty good gap and
\nFrankie Andreu announced my name and our team going through the S\/F!
\nAt this point, Rashaan Bahati (Rock Racing) and John Murphy
\n(Healthnet) were also off the front chasing to "unlap" themselves. I
\nmanaged to bridge up to Rashaan after 3 or 4 laps, but he was cooked
\nand I stayed away one more lap before the field caught back up with
\nabout 7 or 8 laps to go. It was awesome to be off the front of the
\nfield with so many people from Birmingham cheering! Thanks!<\/p>\nThe pack was strung out as it came by me, but I had enough adrenaline
\nso close to the finish of the race to ramp it up and hold on towards
\nthe back of the pack for the next few laps. With 1 to go, a rider in
\nfront of me gapped off on Turn 2 and I couldn’t go around him. I ended
\nup working with him to chase almost back on before the real sprint
\nstarted and then passed a bunch of people who had sat up for the
\nsprint. I think I may have finished somewhere in the mid to lower 30’s.<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ll just post Brian’s race report here, so you can enjoy his recap! My race was insane. The call-ups were like a "who’s who" of criterium racing. Kirk O’Bee, current US Pro crit national champ, Hilton Clarke, Ivan Dominguez, Frank Pipp, Rashaan Bahati, and a bunch more. Toyota United, Healthnet, and Bissell all had their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-9p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}