Monday, May 29, 2006

Day 2, NJ

We have a few Jason’s on the team. But one has really come to lite in my mind this weekend. Jay Harp. A young buck from VT. Talented rider and all round nice guy, funny guy. He always refers to everyone by the full name. “Joe Moody are you still hungry? Here have some of my burrito." “Eric kenney how many doughnuts did you eat before the race?” etc… he also will refer to himself in the third person. When he’s tired in particular. "Jay Harp is felling... not so good right now" This may seem not so funny but after riding a bicycle around in a circle for 1:45 covering over 40 miles with your heart rate over 180 the entire time… yah it was really funny.
the soccer team that's staying in the hotel here is also providing plenty of distraction from racing... and I'll leave that at that.

Onward.
the crit today was hard. More so because we are not a crit team. No sprinter to work for even if we could “work” for him we sat in for the first half (for the most part) waiting for some legs to get tired they did but 4 pairs still had some kick and got away with out one of us. They quickly got a gap that was to far to bridge to. After a few hard pulls from myself Eric Pearson made an aggressive move to the front where 10 guys were splitting away. Joe let us go causing a huge gap. But the group was to big and organization was not there. I felt good. I was recovery quickly and put in some long hard pulls to bring back the breakcouldn'tust couldn’t get “all” of us up there at once. A few guys from our Kenda/ Raleigh team got up there in the waning miles. But with the pressure they were applying I couldn’t move up. When they slipped back with 5 to go the pace slowed and I moved up for one last pull. We got the break close, but not enough. In the end Eric P got 17th. Not bad. But we can do better.
More importantly everyone looked good. We all raced hard and smart. I felt good. Recovery from my efforts, but I just can’t produce that power on the flats for crits.
tomarow that cat 1 guys have the big crit and us cat 2's have a 20 mile barn-burner to deal with, and dispite not being a crit team we're strong and we'll be looking to make things play out our way.


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