Chris Winn: Ramblings From The Road

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27 March 2011

First Win For The Season.

 
The last couple of weekends I've been out and about pinning on some numbers at some local Colorado races. These early season races are always a great way to test the form and get the speed work in the legs before hitting up the bigger NRC's.  To be honest I've never done super well in a lot of the local criteriums, as most are usually flat and more suited to the guys who can put out the big watts in a short space of time.  Last weekend I felt I'd finally kicked the jet-lag and adjusted to the altitude for an 8th place a the CU Criterium.  Today it was DU's turn to host the classic City Park criterium which is always a bunch of fun due to the maze like nature of the park roads and the Mick Doohan style moves you can pull around them!

As per usual being an afternoon race, I rolled out in the morning for a couple of hours and honestly the legs felt terrible!  I had a great training session the day before with some high intensity work that I was definitely paying for, but nonetheless was still motivated to go make myself suffer.  By the afternoon warming up for the race I still wasn't too sure what was in the tank, but due to the nature of the course I was keen to take my chances in a breakaway.  There were a few attacks early and when a promising move of 5 were gaining ground I bridged across and all of a sudden we had some daylight.  Driving the break was former US track Olympian Colby Peace who after a few solid turns on the front had the group down to just four!  With 28 laps to go we were in it for the long haul, but it was clear we were working smooth enough, and with the technical nature of the course our gap ballooned.  With 7 laps to go Colby hit the group, getting a decent gap in a short space of time.  Of course being the well season bike racer he attacked whilst I was coming off my turn on the front, and at that point the panic switch started to light up in the brain!  After rolling turns with my other two break companions it was clear I needed to hit out myself and try and bridge across, and luckily there was still some gas in the tank to scrape up to his back wheel with only a couple of laps left.  At this point we caught the back of the peloton and heading into one lap to go things were going to get a little hairy.  Unfortunately on the last corner there was a crash, with team mate Tito hitting the tarmac with a few others.  With a small hesitation and successfully negotiating around sliding bikes and bodies I was able to open up for the sprint and hold off for the win.  And most importantly shake off my self induced hoodoo about lighter guys winning flat criteriums!


So all in all a nice way to build the confidence before flying out to for the Redlands Classic tomorrow.  This will be our first major team race for the year (and one which the guys won last year) so I'm excited and motivated to see what we can do.  Stay tuned!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Couple more those until you'll be ready to upgrade...........oh wait. Congrats!

JR said...

I hate it when pro riders show up and whoop on us fat weekend guys. Yeah, you're one of them now. Just kidding dude, good work! I'm sure you can't spit off your bike without hitting a pro rider in CO.

Unknown said...

Haha Colorado has a ton of fast bike riders with or without a pro card that's for sure!