Blythewood Crit (Pro/1/2)

It was a hard weekend of crit racing in bad weather conditions against some of the top racers in the southeast. Saturday's 1.4 mile course was a mere five miles from my house, so I was motivated to line up for the feature race. It wasn't a big field, maybe 35 or so, but there were plenty of heavy hitters, including five from the Team Mountain Khakis pro team plus a few other former pro's.

It was 43 degrees and the roads were wet, but we were lucky enough to not get rained on. I had no teammates in the race, and my goal was to get into the winning break. Yeah, that might be a long shot, but sitting in the field and waiting for the finish is a waste. I rode aggressively near the front a lot in the first half of the race, attacking a few times and going with a few moves. Absolutely nothing would stick. I don't think Mountain Khakis wanted a break, unless maybe they had at least two guys in it. In the second half of the race I was really tired. I was able to attack a couple more times, but didn't get anywhere. The last couple of laps were really fast leading up to the field sprint. I was able to get in there and finish a respectable 15th, which was enough to earn a small sliver of the payout.

From a wattage perspective this was quite a workout. 322 watts normalized for just under one hour. The final 1:18 of the race was 454 watts and the final sprint was 806 watts for 20 seconds up a slight rise. For me that was a very good sprint, but everyone else is fast too, so that only allowed me to advance one spot.

Props to all the guys on PV who had great races Saturday. Marc was 3rd in 3's, Nick was 2nd in 4's, and Ladd got 2nd in 35+.