Memorial Park Crit

After returning from a fairly successful Jr. Nationals, I decided to go out and give the Memorial Park Crit a shot. I had no pressure at all to do well. My main goal for the race was to go out and get in a hard workout to try and keep my fitness level from dropping too dramatically. The race started out pretty easy with the usual break going off from the beginning. Kremke then got to the front and rode tempo for about 20 minutes until the break was finally brought back from a flurry of attacks. With a few counter-attacks going that never got more than five seconds ahead of the pack, we ended up rolling around from 23-26 mph for about the next 15 minutes. Trying to get the pace back high, I tried an attack with about 30 minutes left. I quickly built up a good gap, but trying not to completely blow up and get dropped, I rode tempo until I was brought back by a two man break. I quickly jumped into this group and we worked together pretty well until we were caught by the field with about 20 minutes left in the race. After some more failed attempts at attacking I was forced to sit in when we came around with five laps to go. An attack went with about three and a half laps to go with no one really chasing. Over the next lap many people tried to bridge up to the break, but they ended up just reeling it back in. When the break was caught the whole field just sat up, and I found myself shooting past everyone of the left side. Just like before, I quickly built up a large lead. I then buried myself for the last two laps. Coming around with one lap to go the gap had grown to about 15 seconds. I made the mistake of looking back too many times, and found the gap quickly shrinking with about half a lap to go. I then went around the 90 degree turn and looked back about halfway through the long sweeping turn to see a yellow blur/Ronnie Strange fly by me. I then sat up to see Kremke take yet another win, and rolled in at the very back of the pack. This was the second time that this exact thing has happened to me in the past two weeks. The first time being the Nationals Crit. Oh well, it’ll work one of these days.