Forest Park wrapup

Forest Park wrapup

 

Sunday was my first crit of the season. 

 

I got the day off to a great start with a call from work at 12:30am.  An hour later, and problem solved, I crawled back into bed only to wake up several hours later, exhausted, congested and feeling like I had a bloated head.  After breakfast I had laid down in bed, watched a little streaming video of Gent-Wevelgem and hoped to get a little bit more rest.

 

My body felt a little better after the nap.  As much as anything, the simple act of deciding what to wear, packing up all the gear, loading the bike into the car and all the other routine acts of race preparation seemed to do as much good as anything for my general condition.  The conditions were chilly and wet so just resigning myself to having a couple unpleasant hours on the bike was half the battle.

 

And, unpleasant it was.  Temperatures in the low 40's, windy, wet.  I quickly made up my mind to race just the Masters and not try to do Masters and Cat 3 back-to-back.  After changing clothes, Giuseppe and I headed eastward along the roads in Forest Park and the headwind and spitting rain stinging the skin made for an unpleasant start to a  warmup.  Never has the left hand turn, up the hill to the Art Museum, felt so good.

 

Race time came and I was not excited to be there.  I floated around aimlessly at the back end of the pack, as if I was begging to get dropped with one good acceleration.  Eventually, my head got in the game and I put in a short little effort.  After that, I actually did a little racing.  I tried to follow Henderson on the prime lap.  That was almost laughable.  His attack did not seem that harsh but the consistent application of power had me gasping up the little rise to the final turn.  Sitting in the pack for a little while sounded like a good idea after that.

 

All in all, it was a good race.  Giuseppe put himself in a break and the rest of were busy marking moves by others.  Dyer marked Henderson’s winning bridge, while Christophe and I were covering others trying to get up to Giuseppe’s group of four. 

 

All in all, it was a good day with the team getting 2^nd, 3^rd, 7^th and 10^th.