Just finished dinner. It’s 1:48 am. Perfect. This race was destined to be a field sprint. Which it was. Not without some minor drama. Daniel Holloway, Bissell, sporting his recently won Professional National Criterium Champion Jersey, decided to ride the fastest lap of the race from the gun. He was going very fast. Too fast for my liking. I had warmed up all the way from the car to the start line, which was probably a 1/4 mile.

Anyway, there are a few good professional riders here. And a lot of good elite riders. About 130 starters. The course tonight was a flat 4 corner criterium. With super wide open streets. It is easy to take most of the corners 5 abreast. A few breaks got up the road. A serious move went with about 10 laps to go. Scott Monninger, Big Shark, Daniel Holloway, Bissell, Chad Hartley, Kenda and a couple others were up the road. Brian made a move to bridge with one Kenda guy taggin’ on, but didn’t get up to it. But, we were all back together with less than 3 laps to go.

I’m not sure what happened to us the last lap. I hooked up with Bill and was moving up towards the front on the last lap. Nick was on Bill. I missed a couple easy moves and was too far back with 1/2 lap to go. I had to make a sketchy move and that was the end of moving up my team mates. I came out of the last corner, which is 300 meters to the finish, around 15th and passed 8 guys, I guess, before I came to the finish line. So I ended up 7th. That wasn’t a stellar finish for me here, but it could have gone a lot worse. Bill was in the lower teens. I’m not sure about Nick.

Daniel Holloway did his jersey proud and won the race pretty convincingly. I’m not sure who was 2nd, but Brad Huff, Jelly Belly was 3rd and Josh Carter, San Jose was ahead of me too. The race was pretty quick. We had nearly a 29 mph average speed for the hour 2 minutes and my maximum speed was nearly 40.

The crowds at this race are great. The neighborhood was pretty run down when I first started racing here and now there are great restaurants, coffee shops and lots of artsy residential housing. There are 1000’s of people who never see another bicycle race the whole year that come out and cheer like crazy. Pretty fun. Especially at night.

Tomorrow’s race is in the late afternoon. Another flat, wide open race. Good leg speed workout I guess. But, the problem with that is when I really need to go fast I just drop it into an 11 and slug away. That kind of counter acts that training still I think. ’til then. Chow ciao.

Short update. Just finished another wide open flat criterium. It didn’t go so well. A big move got away early. We, TradeWind Energy, had Nick Coil in the move. After a few laps, another group of 5 bridged up. This group had Daniel Holloway in it, plus another Kenda rider. Not good. But, it went away so quickly, that by the time I realized it was gone, it was gone. Brian tried to bridge up to the new bigger move with Josh Carter and Scott Monninger, but they only made it half way before Josh pulled the plug, then Brian and Scott.

Then it got worse. Nick got popped out of the 11 man group along with 3 others. Then there were 7. The field made an effort and took some time out of the move, but it still had 30 seconds with 5 laps to go. Rumor has it that the break split up at the end when Jonathan Jacob, from Nuvo Cycling Team, Indianapolis, took off towards the end. Holloway tried to bridge alone, but blew. Jacob won alone. Dave Hendersen, from Columbia Missouri, Master’s Criterium National Champion, came in alone for 2nd. Then Eric Young, another Nuvo rider was 3rd. Holloway was 4th, followed by two Kenda Pro riders.

The field got moving the last couple laps. I was in pretty good position with 1/2 a lap to go. Brad Huff, Jelly Belly, had taken off alone. On the last stretch before the final corner, I got behind my team mate, Bill Stolte, and told him to go. He jumped to the right from about 10 back. I was on Bill, but our misfortune was that Brad Huff was being swallowed by the field and swung off to the right. I saw that Bill was going to get screwed up, so I tried to punch my way back into the line coming by on the left. Chad Hartley, Kenda was leading out the sprint, much like he did last year. I finally gave up on the punching in plan and just decided to go around the outside in the last corner and hope for the best. The best wasn’t to my liking. I ended up 7th or 8th in the field sprint, which is around 15th for the day.

Tomorrow’s race is on the hill in the Italian section of St. Louis. A much more challenging course, but still usually a field sprint. A better workout for sure. After the race, they have a spaghetti feed at the lawn bowling club. It is usually pretty fun. Kind of an eclectic happening. Weird mixture of athletes and old Italian folks.

Another photo from the startline.

There is a ton of old brick buildings in St. Louis. It is nice riding around the neighborhoods.