Weekend Report

Last weekend, I competed in my first P1-2 races. It was almost the most fun racing my bike that I have had all year. There was no frustratingly slow times (for me at least..some of the other guys were complaining that the races were slow) and it was so smooth. On Saturday, I raced at the Fed Center Circuit race. This was a 3.4 mi circuit with 12 corners which made for an exciting day. I was pretty nervous before the race started since I didn't know what to expect and didn't know if I'd be totally destroyed by the pace. Once we started, the race continued at a reasonable pace ~30mph and there were alot of attacks, which I kept trying to go with, but nothing stuck. I decided to sit in and hang on since I didn't want to get dropped. A pretty nasty crash happened on the 2nd lap of 9 laps. Some dude crossed my rear wheel and went down hard and took probably 10 guys out with him. The field chilled out a little bit after this since no attacks could get away do to the course conditions and I finished with the main field in 21st place. Sunday I did the Bannock crit, which is one of the best crit courses in CO. It is an 8 corner 1 mi circuit with wide streets and pretty safe minus the huge manhole cover potholes. I was expecting this race to be really fast so I was trying to stay in good position the whole race, up front and out of trouble. A break went with 25 min to go and stayed away. The pace slowed up a little bit and made it alot more tolerable since I'm not used to racing at these power levels. It was a good learning experience about what kind of effort it takes to sit in the field and what it will take to be aggressive. I finished with the main field in 40th or something like that. Racing with the pros is ALOT less scarey than any other category I have raced with. Usually I get scared the last 5 laps of a crit or the last few km's of a road race and thus far I haven't gotten that feeling from this field. The next race is Carter Lake which should be very interesting since I haven't done a P1-2 road race before.