July 6th -Wood Dale Crit — the final tune up before SuperWeek. I went into this race feeling good in light of a strong tuneup and some good rest. I rode two races — the 30+ open and the Cat 4. The 30+ was one of the fastest races I have done in quite some time. I killed it just to stay with the group. At one point I was 3-4 wheels from last in line and I looked down at the PT and saw 28.6 mph. And that was just barely hanging on!! Still, I was happy with the race since I managed to finish 19th out of ~30 riders.
The Cat 4 race was another story. I slipped back into old, bad habits of not pushing it and finished yet another race not even breathing hard. I can identify two moments of mistake. The first happened about 10′ into the race when Chris Padfield, who won last week’s State Championship with a solo move, attacked. I jumped after him and bridged up, but I thought it was too early and so just sat on his wheel. In hindsight, I should have gone right past him and started a rotation. Yes, it was very early, but he is clearly a strong rider and if we could have coaxed another strong rider or two out of the pack, we might have either had a shot or at the very least split the field up. The second mistake happened towards the end when my teammate Brian McCarthy moved up and I didn’t follow closely enough. I had the legs to move up, but not the nerve. It turns out that I would have been sprinting only for 2nd place because there was a guy off the front who was out of sight.
Now on to SuperWeek, with some good legs and high expectations.