This weekend has been good. Yesterday was the Capitol City Criterium in Lincoln, NE. The Bike Pedalers were hosting the race and invited myself and team mate Matt Landen to come out and participate in the festivities. It was pretty cool as day 1 had a bike festival, safety clinics, and other good wholesome family fun.
The race yesterday started off with Matt and I doing a couple feeler moves. These moves turned into full blown break aways as Matt lapped the field with an old team mate and friend Chris Spence. After they went away they started calling cash primes for the field and I was happy to test out the sprinting legs. Felt good and went 3 for 3. Felt kind of greedy but hey, that's bike racing. After the primes, it was time for the sprint for 3rd, and I got that too. It felt great to go back to the homeland and have a good performance for both Matt and mylelf, as he won overall.
Today was another great day. The course is the old Pioneers Park course. Let's just say a 2 mile loop with a 75 foot kicker per lap. This course is another one that I have done a lot of training in the college years and enjoy immensely. Lap 1 was fairly docile. So lap 2 I wanted to streatch the legs and see how egar people were to chase. So from the front I wound it up and Chris Spencs (again) was right there to cover the move. We worked well together until his team mate (and my former team mate) joined us and then I had to do what I HATE doing... sitting on! But once again, that's bike racing. Matt was in a duo chase group sitting about one minute back from us and I was relieved that the threat of Matt joining our group made Jarrod and Chris keep the tempo high. In the end, the sprint started about half way up the hill. Once it flattened out I gave it all I could and it was just enough to hold out for the win. Matt followed up in 5th.
SO.... 4 podiums... 2 days... pretty good showing for our homecoming race.
