Temultous Merco

Last weekend we raced in Merced. Overall the weekend was a bit disappointing. We made mistakes, but we learned a lot. There are a lot of new guys on the team and its normal for things to take a few tries to click properly.

It started of when we missed the break during Saturday's crit. Given that all of the other good teams were represented in the group of 5 it was up to us to chase. We got to the front with 12 laps to go and caught the break inside the last 300m, but by then Matt Rice had attacked out of the break and soloed to the win.

Us chasing. Courtesy of Wil Matthews.

Personally I was a bit petrified for the first half of the race. Its been a long time since I've raced a real crit and I was also pretty nervous after the stupid crash at Snelling. Still I got it out of my system eventually. So when we decided to get organized it was pretty straightforward to get to the front.

We made sure to make the break in the road race because chasing is never fun. But there were some tactical mistakes made and we only ended up with 7th. It was a good win for Ben J-M, very well ridden by Bissell in the last part of the race.

The break hovered 1.5 minutes in front of the peleton. Courtesy of Wil Matthews

This week the team is down in SoCal for the Tour of Murrieta, but I am staying a bit closer to home and racing the Madera stage race on my own. It should be a good time with two time trials, so there is plenty for me to practice. This week has been pretty had in terms of training so I'm a little worried about having flat legs, but it should set me up nicely for the bigger goals of San Dimas and Redlands in a couple of weeks.

I'll be sure to update more quickly after this weekend.