Rummy

Saturday night, the Doctor One Percent was having a birthday party at which my attendance was recommended.

So I got duded up in my sweet party shirt, went out, ate a lot of deviled eggs, chatted up some folks, and I made it a point to not have too much to drink.

I think I turned in at about 3:00AM that night, but all told, it was a good time and my deviled egg total stood somewhere around 16 halves. That's 8 entire deviled eggs. Word.

I woke up at 9 feeling full, slightly ill, and unenthusiastic about racing my bicycle at noon.

But I ponied up and did it anyway.

It was a criterium here in town. Nice to not have to drive many hours for a race for once. I rode out there with my roommates to watch Fast Freddy in his racing debut, then got it on myself in the Cat 4 race. Ben, Andrea, and Doctor 1% all made it out to spectate, which is always nice.

Despite my legs feeling completely dead and a weird case of the jitters (I think it was from racing in a new field with guys I don't know all that well), things went decently.

My kind of course. Windy with 2 short, shallow power climbs that no one wanted to drill it on.

At the time, I thought everyone in the field was just being lazy and saving it for the sprint. In retrospect, I think everyone was just feeling a little sluggish. A couple of my teammates who are usually a good bit quicker than me popped off the back of the race a few laps in. Thinking back, I should have gone for a break in the latter part of the race--I'm really a little too chickenshit to take a corner really hot at the end of the race, so I always end up dropping down to about 20th around the last corner into the finishing straights.

This race proved no different.

I sat in the front 10 people for the most of the race and felt really comfy there. The corners are definitely getting better (it helped that these were nice and wide) and I was able to hold my position through most of them without ever touching the brakes. It made a huge difference to not have to sprint back onto the field every lap.

There were a few incidents of sketchiness, riders cutting across lines that they shouldn't have been, people riding squirrely, etc. I myself accelerated too hard up the climb and ended up rubbing my front wheel on someone else's back wheel. My bad. Lucky I avoided a crash.

The pace cooled off with 2 laps to go and then started inching up toward painful as we made our way around the course on the bell lap.

I held my position at the front until the final corner. A few people took it pretty hot in front of me, swung wide, got sketched, etc. I went pretty wide to avoid all of that and ended up alone in the gutter.

Everyone jumped out of that final corner really quickly. I looked over and saw my (fast) teammate James turn it on and I just made it my goal to follow him to the line. We probably held a 300m uphill sprint to the finish at 32-33mph and I almost threw up.

But I came out of the final corner at about 15-20th place...and I (though I don't have an official result yet) believe I crossed the finish line at 8th or 9th place.

My third time contesting a field sprint for the win, and my first foray into the top ten. I'm pretty happy about that as it's very early in the season (this was the first local non-collegiate race of the year). If I keep on task, it should only get better.

Thanks again to Ben, Andrea, a sleepy Doctor One Percent, and the always charming Fast Freddy for cheering during the race. Double props to Freddy for his first races since 1993 Juniors.