Today was a 90 minute crit through downtown Fayetteville. The crowd wasn't as big as we had hoped for a uni town! The racing was bound to be fast from the get go as the general classification was still tight and Real-cyclists strangle hold on the NRC was about to be cracked. The course was a pretty fun balance between technical and challenging, with a steep uphill kick to the line. It wasn't long before Bissell had cracked the field forcing a strong 12 man break with all the top team represented. Bissell ended up taking second and third on the stage and one two on the GC. This was the first time this season Mancebo had been beaten in a big stage race.
Hubby's View
Today was about surviving for me and helping my team mate Danny Heeley move up on GC as much as possible as prize money was paid forty deep. After roughly 20minutes I was moving through the field pretty well for me, not being a huge a crit fan. My legs actually felt great compared to where I had been early in the week. But a bad start had me out of position and after working hard to move around guys I wasn't able to help Heeley. This was a shame as he was only a couple of guys ahead of me when the pace became too much and I was shelled of the back. It would have been good for the team if I could have given Danny some support before I was out of the race. Time for me to take a break as I have been racing and training nonstop from December. Hope to be fighting fit and healthy again and reporting some good results in the near future! Now for the long haul back to California. Thanks for the continued support!
Danny's View
Lining up for todays crit in the heat and humidity knowing that the course was also going to be brutal made me pretty excited today, I like crits when they are nice and hard! From the start the Bissel hammer was down trying to crack the stranglehold that Mancebo has had on the NRC stage races and it was pretty sweet that they succeeded. The hill and heat lead to a rapidly depleting peleton and by the end I unfortunately missed the break of 12 that got up the road leaving only 15 or so of us to sprint it out for the remaining places. I did a so cal crit maneuver to make some places up on the last fast corner before the sprint and started it 5th wheel at the last corner. I got a bit excited and went way to early into the headwind up the hill and lost as many places as I gained but its nice to feel like I am a part of races again after Gila and being sick at Redlands. Pretty stoked on my first NRC points and money at an NRC stage race.
Sleece's View
Today I went for a ride in the morning on my tt bike but had to watch as Danny and Hubby raced. It was great to watch them suffer and do well even though I was really unhappy to be unable to race. I realized that I am ready for a midseason break as I rode by myself this morning. We'll take the next few days to travel home and have a bit of time off of serious training and racing, then of course we'll be at it again ready to come out swinging at Tulsa and Nationals and whatever else we end up shooting for. I'm really excited for the rest of the season and for continuing to get better.
Thanks to the team for all the support and thanks for reading up on the blog. We'll try to post some more pictures from the rest of the race soon. Also, we plan to keep using this blog for racing/travel updates and reports in the future so don't forget about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment