San Rafael Twilight Elite 3s
Repeat of Berkeley anyone?!
(the homie Gabe Morford hooked it up with this gem)
There were for sure glances from other competitors at myself and my teammates on Chica Sexy. For the racers that were eating our dust from last weeks crit (Albany crit/Berkeley). We were for sure marked. I was asked by a couple of peeps how I was feeling and if there was going to be a repeat.
I was blocked at the line up by numerous teams so a start line start was out of the question. That’s what my plan was again like last week. I told Marc (team Chica sexy) and Tyler Kraus. “At the whistle I’m going." It didn’t work out how I wanted. So it was a fight to get up to a top ten position the whole race. About 15 minutes in I kept seeing gaps on the backside of the course opening up. So I countered a the field . Saw that a dude Stephen Rockwood (Canary Cycling) had taken a fresh gap from the field and I was already on my wy SO! Why not?! So we took off and behind me was a Pacific Catch and MetroMint rider. We kept a 15-20 minute gap. But metromint fell of. Pacific catch slowed on the kicker and Canary.. I dunno but we could’ve kept the gap! I’m not saying I was the more ramped to crush a break but I was really upset when the Data Driven athlete caught up and slowed out break down and there goes the positive attempt. The rest of the race I fought to keep position up near the front. But every time I wouldn’t hammer the field would swallow me up. Yeah the field was that close. Two to go the pace ramped up. Teammates Marc Marino and Tim Tsruda came up towards the front as the group hit the kicker after turn one. Unfortunately Marc got swallowed by the swell of competitors/he didn’t have a clean line to advance towards the front. I sat in for a second and attacked towards the front for a 11-12th place spot as we came around turn three. On the super quick one block descent a dude from Alto Velo blew out his rear tire. He was at the front and took out my friend Tyler Kraus who was sitting third wheel and was probably going to take second. The crash seemed real nasty but everyone came out with cuts and bruises. THE SPRINT! So the crash happened. A couple dudes slowed down or were stunned about the incident so I capitalized and blew the eff up! Out of the saddle passed four riders and finished 8th over all. Which top 10 is a position I will not argue with. The dude who won it was a young buck Ryan Wai (OTR Racing). He jumped with two to go and kept his gap all the way to the finish…Tyler had seen his attack and wished there was more support with him so he could’ve bridged up with the guy. But instead he wanted to get crashed out by the whole Alto Velo team! Haha kidding.
OH! Marc and i rode down from SF. We got to San Rafael a bit early but still a nice warm up ride. Sol Food was ofcourse on the agenda when in Downtown SR! Stuffed myself almost into a coma! ALSO shout out to the SF Cycling Club (SFCC) for yelling at me and getting some awesome grammin action! you guys were muscling your race!
STRAVA
Thanks again for the support.