State Crit 2011
Aggressors:
Did the State Crit. First 10 minutes was nice; remaining 30 minutes was a decent into discomfort as the rain gradually turned to sleet. Combined peloton had perhaps 15 guys. The course was quite nice; new pavement, wide streets, 53 ft of elev gain per lap. First lap was routine, rode in position 4. Lap 2 half the peloton sprinted up the hill and all of a sudden I was in position 8 or 9. I felt like it was a bit much, too soon, and might burn me if I tried to hang, so I let them go. I started working with a 60+ Summit Velo rider and kept my HR just under threshold on the laps I pulled. We alternated pulls each lap. With 3 laps to go we passed a couple of burnouts from the lap 2 sprint and kept rolling. With 2 laps to go we were perhaps 300m back from the main group of half a dozen. With 1 lap to go we were maybe 50m back and it was my pull so I drew close enough to be in the draught but tried to avoid being noticed. Approaching the final turn I actually dropped back a little and then accelerated to the outside for the final turn, passed all of them in the turn, and then sprinted the remaining 100m to the line. As I looked up after crossing the line I could see a 2 man break that had already crossed the line perhaps 5-7 seconds ahead of me and unfortunately one of them was in my group (William Hydinger), so I ended up 2nd. Nevertheless, it was a good training event for me and I was able to keep my HR just below threshold pretty much the whole time I was pulling.
