Blythewood Criterium

Yesterday I did the Blythewood crit, close to Columbia, South Carolina. I planned to do the 15-18 juniors race and the cat. 4's, and hoped I'd be feeling well enough to do pretty good after getting strep on Tuesday. Although I had been feeling great and my throat didn't hurt anymore, my biggest concern was if the antibiotics would affect me.

We got to the race at 8 o' clock and were greeted by cold, rainy conditions, but nonetheless a pretty good group of riders. The rain stopped a little just before the start of the 9:35 juniors race and I rode the course a couple of times.

I lined up for the race and saw that there were about 14 riders, 7 being in the 15-18 category, but no one I recognized besides my teammates. The race started, and I got to the front to go around the soaked first corner safely. My teammate, Michael Raynor, passed me, and I got into 3rd place.

Near the end of the first lap on a long strait downhill, I pulled off and my momentum carried me a little past Michael who was still at the front. One bike length became two and that became three and then four, and, not expecting my teammate to chase me down, I decided to go for it. As I crossed the finish line, I had a 5 second gap, and that became 15 the next lap.

Halfway through the 3rd lap, Michael bridged up to me. At this point I wasn't feeling very good, and was glad to have someone else break the wind for a while. We shared pulls, and the gap became bigger and bigger until we were close to lapping the next group. Having never been in a situation were one of my teammate and I were going to finish 1-2, I pulled up next to Michael and asked him if he wanted to finish hand in hand or go for the sprint, and we finished with our hands held up together.

3 hours later was the cat. 4 race, and a 25 rider strong field showed up despite the weather. The race started fast and never seemed to slow down as I was feeling weak, and I was in a bad position until half a lap to go. I had gotten into 2nd when a couple groups of riders swarmed the front. I really had to fight for positioning after that, especially around the last corner. I sprinted hard, and ended up 7th.

I was disappointed about being in a bad position, but I didn't feel that there was very much I could do. On the positive side though, my team did great, winning the 17-18, 15-16 and 10-12 races, as well as getting 3rd in the 13-14's. I also got 45 dollars!

Congratulations to my whole team for their excellent performances. Also, thanks to Micheal, who was probably riding stronger than me and helped me win the 15-16 race.