Over the past weekend, on two occasions, I have had two near misses in avoiding a high speed tumbles to the tar. Crashing is part of cycling and bound to happen at some stage to anyone. A few short weeks ago I made my last skin donation to the black stuff and with that in the back of my mind I wasn’t keen to make another.
The team raced in Albany, Georgia this past weekend. Deep down South! We would be taking part in the first round of the South East Regional Series in a criterium on Saturday and road race on Sunday.
The crit went pretty well. We managed to get Doctor J.Lo in the break of 6where he took 4th at the end of the day. The doctor would readily admit that sprinting is not one of his fortes; however with a go at some of the sprint primes and his final result he managed to win the sprinters jersey! With 30minutes left of racing myself and Mr Wells found ourselves in an 8 rider strong move, our attempt to bridge to the front of the race wasn’t successful but at least we gave it a go. Although we were racing for 7th, the boys set up an awesome train coming into the finish, Junior Mint managed to take the honours with myself getting 10th.
Cruising up to the start of the crit.
The Doctor driving the break.
Image Credits: Ash Smit
With a delicious Thai dinner in our bellies (thank you Peter!) the boys lined up the next morning for the 145km road race. The course was flat, and with no wind to speak of I knew there would be a big bunch contesting the final gallop. With some 25km left of racing I managed to avoid my first crash. The racing got tight with the centre line rule in effect and after a bit of argy bargy, one of the riders lost his balance and put his front wheel into someone else’s derailleur and shortly thereafter found himself on the ground. After slamming on brakes I came to a screeching halt just before the mess of tangled bikes! Disaster averted!
After the first near miss we were back in the action hurtling towards the finish with our strong men on the front ramping up the speed. I found myself on Junior Mint’s wheel and felt good to give it a go. A rider from the Litespeed/BMW team tried to spoil our party and push into our train, Junior Mint didn’t allow this to happen though and after he tried to push in a second time the Litespeed/BMW rider lost control and ended his race early. Junior Mint and I just managed to avoid the pile up, but both lost some valuable momentum so close to the line. We kicked as hard as we could but found ourselves in 5th and 9th position on the day. Not quite the results we were looking for but something to work from I guess.
The positive to draw from the weekend was that the team rode well as a unit and combined especially well together in setting up the train on Saturday. Being one of the younger guys on the team is great as the opportunities it provides to learn from the older more experienced guys is awesome!
This weekend we will race locally building up to our next major race next weekend the Tulsa Tough.
Until then, keep the rider side down and avoid those crashes!
The team for the weekend with our cheerleaders!
Some pre race fun, we found a BMX track on our spin around Albany and had to give it a go! No Tubes all the way!
A bad ass car which I thought would fit in quite well in Pretoria, any Blou Bulle fans interested?
chriswolhuter.com 