Tour de Murrieta last weekend. I raced the 2/3, hoping for a better shot at a result. Unfortunately I was fighting off the start of a cold and felt feverish on Friday (though no respiratory symptoms oddly enough). Started the crit feeling alright, but after following a couple moves realized I that the legs were not turning over. Bridged up to a break with some strong guys, including teammate @
TMonk (who was riding strong af all weekend, all those miles have been paying off!). Recovered for half a lap, took a pull into the headwind, took the two lefts back onto the start/finish stretch, and then got dropped on the tailwind section D: Note to self, don't get dropped from a break with a teammate! Even if it means getting yelled at and skipping pulls!
Anyway, that group ended up getting caught. Coming through 4 to go, there was a group of 2 off the front with a decent gap, so I got to the front and chased at a steady vo2max pace as aero as I could get and slowly reeled them back in. Then, as I'm slotting back into the pack, there's a big crash behind me. When we roll back through the line the officials stop us with 2 to go. We sat there for about 5 minutes and they restarted us at 3 to go. This kills the legs. I wasn't able to get back up to a good position, got caught behind a last lap crash, and our sprinter got 6th.
Felt a little better for the circuit race. Rode front 5 wheels for the first 10-15 minutes and then realized that I was not feeling good enough for that, so I fell back a bit to recover. @
TMonk, along with a couple of other teammates, was covering moves really well and riding super aggressively with counter attacks. Got back up towards the front in the 2nd half and started countering some moves as much as my recovery would let me. Tried to counter once and the field stuck on my wheel, so I moved over to the right side of the road like I was giving up, waited a couple seconds, and went again with the sneaky self-counter. Got a gap and one strong junior bridged up to me. We worked together, but he was way stronger than me and I had to skip half my pulls, but still tried my best to make it work. We had about a 20 second gap at one point, coming into 2 laps to go, but got caught after half a lap off the front. Tried and failed to get in front of my sprinter for the finale, he was cramping a bit and ended up 15th.
I'm glad I was able to make some moves despite feeling pretty bad. My volume has been really low this past 5-6 weeks. I need to ramp it up now that the rain is over. Really really impressed with @
TMonk's fitness right now. You should be a 2 really really soon at this rate. And a strong one at that.
Head down, chase mode, from a video one of the jr. dads took (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E48JVa1XWU):
The break I thought was going to work @ 1:40