Yuma
Posted on March 3, 2009
Yuma Crit
Left San Diego with plenty of time but still managed to get there with 60 minutes to spare. Not a whole lot of warming-up needed as it was already 90 degrees.
This course is a tough one. Think of it as a way hillier Barrio Logan. Good thing is that the field is MUCH smaller. I think 30 or so guys started.
It was a strange race for me. People did try to go off the front but nothing really coordinated. Not sure if you could coordinate anything with so few riders. Some teams had 3-4 riders and they really did not try anything either.
Slowly the field thinned out and even though it was a slower crit it did hurt a bit. The hill put the dent in the carcass. With 2 to go there was a guy off the front and another group of 5 guys that were trying to get away. My teammate got to front and pulled everything back together. He was doing this for my sprint… well, I wasn’t there so that sucked. I managed 6th, but still, with that effort I should have delivered something better.
Yuma RR
This is where it got really interesting. Not so windy as last year. Early start times so it was still 45 degrees when we rolled. 83 miles total.
We remembered a couple of the riders from last year, so we kept an eye on them.
Within 4 miles people were trying to get away. BTW, I think 18-20 started, I am not sure, VERY small field, but only the best of the best… yeah right!
So in the first 15 miles a couple of guys really tried to get away. I gotta tell you. There were some real douche bags in the field. They were sitting good in GC and would not pull. Others were way down and they would not do anything either. A lot of negative racing… a lot. A lot of noodling and cockyness.. guys thinking that they could pull a fast one in the last lap of last half a lap, so they were just sitting in.
Very hard to keep writing cause so much dumb stuff happened in the race, I am not sure where to start. People making absolutely sure they would not hit the wind and I would check them out, next thing you know we are 100 meters away from the pack and these idiots cracking jokes… they were to lame to be 3rd last…NO, they wanted to be THE LAST rider… dumb games. Then we had The Procon guys chasing each other in breaks.. just idiotic tactics. I told the guy that his teammate was is the break and he replied to me saying that his teammate was in last place. Well guess what, the guy that ultimately won the race was in second to last and he ended up 2 GC. So there you go.
Anyways, my teammate got in a break with 2 other guys. They were off and I thought they would make it. They got reeled in. Then I tried to get away and my teammate was on my wheel and we just started to roll away.. nobody wanted to chase!
Finally they catch up and then my teammate goes solo. He rolls off. All of the sudden he is almost out of sight. I am sitting pretty. I wanted to make sure that the guys not doing any of the work would chase and they finally did. It took a LOT of work to reel him in, which was great.
So now we are together… 30 seconds go buy and my teammate rolls of the front once more. Mind you he was alone for a good 40 minutes. Now he has the same lead. I try to disrupt the chase, it works really well. I was going to make sure that all that negative racing would hurt them in the end.
I tell the group that my teammate is an ex-TT champion of Spain and they all believe it… or at least the guys sitting in did. The chase hard once more. I ride the wave, disrupt some more.
Now they are getting pissed. I was being a real jerk. But then again, we were trying to establish a break all day an nobody would work, so this is the punishement.
We catch my teammate. The guys that were sitting in are just gassed. I start laughing. We ride for about 2 minutes and my teammate goes AGAIN! And now they are beside themselves. They are yelling, c’mon guys, lets race!!! In my head I am like, you efen idiot, where were you when we WERE racing….
So now some more chasing and we catch him once more. As soon as that happens I go. I really wanted to make them hurt. I was in pain, but I had to do it. 2 guys roll with me. And we were off. 11-12 miles to go. We established a nice rotating paceline and the gap grew.
Miles ticked off and I was hurting pretty bad. No water in the last 15 miles so my legs were locking up. But we had the gap and they were not closing it. We ended up staying away and I got 2nd in the sprint. I thought about standing and giving it a good kick but as soon as I did the legs seized, so I rolled it.. pushing 700watts, but I still did it seated.
In the bunch sprint I guess all the guys that were racing negatively took themselves out in a crash. Boy do I believe in Karma.
Thanks to Nathan for all the insane work he put out there. It really put the hurt on those guys.
I ended 3rd GC, which was nice.
PS: while in the break I averaged 340 watts for the last 11-12 miles… that was pretty good after some other efforts earlier.
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