2012 Tour of New Braunfels

Thank God the season has started.  With months of looking forward, I was finally at a race day.  I was not surprised to find myself so anxious and ready to see how I matched up against the P12′s after a lot of work in the offseason.

Omloop

The first race on tap for the weekend was the Omloop.  This is a small circuit race that has a huge downhill with the rest of the course gradually returning to the starting elevation.  After the gun, it was evident that I was not alone in my nervousness, and there were many near crashes in the first few laps.  My plan for the race was to be aggressive and exchange following attacks with my two teammates in the race.  With a small team, it is almost impossible to choose the right move, and we knew that luck would have to be with us if we wanted to make the right breakaway.

Early in the race we sat in, watching the constant attacks on the uphill section get quickly caught on the fast descent.  Each lap, this was tried again and again.  Finally, there was a move that we could not ignore:  the strongest guys in the field had just attacked!  They were gone so quickly.  I knew a had to bridge ASAP, but it took some time to get to the front of the group.  Once at the front, I waited for someone else to go to grab their wheel.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Imari Miller coming by. I grabbed his wheel and hung on as we shot out of the pack.  Three or four others came as well.  Unfortunately the group did not work well together, and instead we attacked each other as the peloton gained the time back on us.  The move left my lungs burning, and as the peloton swarmed around me, I knew it would be hard to stay on.  Somehow I fought through the pain and recovered.  I decided it might be better to sit in!

For the rest of the race, I sat in and waited for the sprint finish.  With two laps to go, I got to the front, ready to take an open window for the sprint finish for around 8th.  But when it came to the line, I had no where to go, and was blocked in by others.  I ended up about 30th, but was okay with this result.  I moved well through the pack and was there with energy in the sprint.   It is still early in the season.

ToNB RR

The ToNB RR is a pretty easy course, and the only difficult part is through the uphill feed zone.  The rest of the course is rolling hills that sting the legs but are not long enough to worry about getting dropped.  I focused on staying about halfway up in the ~75 person field.  The pace was high and smooth, and I focused on staying efficient and eating lots of calories.  After about 1.5 hours, I looked behind me and was surprised to see that I was at the back.  Half the field was gone!  I was still sitting about 30th, but there were no people behind. I decided to move up and get ready for the end.

Somehow I knew that Lawson Craddock was going to attack on the hill where the feed zone usually is.  My gut feeling was that enough people would want to chase him down that if I stayed in the main field, I would be in a great position for the sprint.  Admittedly, this tactic was risky and was based on the assumption that there would be fresh legs to chase down the last-ditch breakaway.  I sat about 10th wheel and hoped.

Luckily the group up the road was caught about 500 meters to the line! This caused the field sprint for 5th to be absolutely nuts. I weaved in and out, and with 300 meters to the line, space opened up in front of me. It was time to sprint. I kicked as hard as I could, and was out in front for most of the sprint. I was nipped at the line and took 6th, 2nd in the sprint.  What a great result for me though!  I was really excited and could hardly believe it.  It will be hard to match a result like that very often in the P12′s.