Up hill, down hill, up hill, down hill…REPEAT!  Oh yea…and 105 degree heat index again in a parking lot.

That explains today’s crit course.  The first 9 minutes were full gas and I began to wonder how long I was going to hang on. Thankfully as the thought crossed my mind of “I don’t think i can do one more climb at this pace,” the field backed off the intensity.  WHEW!  My legs recovered and I was a happy camper.

We continued a steady hard effort as the field responded to attacks and hard pushes and the field was rolling smoothly. 18+mph up hill and 35+ mph down hill.  At 13 or 14 laps in a gap formed in front of a rider in front of me, I stood to accelerate around the fading rider and my legs said “Nope, we are done!  You haven’t done this to us in way too long.” I saw the field slowly creep away up the climb as I fought with my body to try and continue on.

Unlike yesterday I continued on.  The “DNF” after my name in yesterday’s results was not something that I liked seeing and I had determined that no matter what I would press on.  I finished out the remaining 20 minutes and worked with some other dropped riders to ease the work.  All in all it was a fun day and much better to take a placing than nothing.

Racing back into shape!

RESULTS