Tour de Villas

I didn't know if I was going to do this one or not, I was a little unnerved after Sherman Park and haven't raced since. Memories of Monsters crept into my head at Sherman and that just took me out of contention in and of itself.

Seeing that some teammates were going I thought it would be a good tune up for Superweek. Also seeing that this was an ABR race, why not race as a 3? It's where I wouldn't mind being so why not test the waters? So Paul and I  signed up.

The cat 4 race finishes with Elvis coming in 10th but a crash on the last lap brings out the ambulance. Hopefully the guy is OK. As we are waiting and the promoters are losing time they decide to combine the 3's and the 1,2,3's fields. I think there were only 36 riders total.

My goal was to just hang on and see what it was like to be in a higher cat. When they combined the fields now my goal was to hold on for dear life and see what it was like.
The race starts without any difference than I'm use to. The laps progressed with attack after attack occurring. Nothing that couldn't be covered. Then a group of 6 gets off the front effortlessly. Nothing big, just a progressive increase in pace. I didn't really see it go off and even if I did my goal was to just hold on. As the laps progressed there were a couple of fliers to bridge the gap but they were reeled back into the pack. The funniest was an obvious cat 1 or 2 who missed the break who was doing a good amount of pulling. He was getting upset with the pack hollering at us to do some work. To his disadvantage was the more he hollered the less people wanted to work.

With 3 left there was a prime and I caught glimpse of Paul still hanging in. I did a little pulling at this point hitting 27 to 28 mph. Didn't feel too bad either. I played the last lap poorly pulling a little but knowing the sprint would start any minute. So I eased off and got swarmed. I knew this was too long to be the sprint and just eased in to the back of them. With about 200m left I started to pick off some guys. I knew I was close to picking a guy off at the line but would have to wait for the video. Sure enough he got me at the line. Even though I would have loved to get that guy, he was a 123, my goal was accomplished. I think I came in 10th for the 3's and 21st overall. Superweek here we come rocking our new kits!