The Cat 3 race was a lot of fun. Peter, Mark, Nick, Mike, Geoff, and I all discussed our plan before the race. Naturally, our plan didn’t work worth a crap.

At any rate, I wanted to stay near the front, because passing was somewhat difficult, turns 2 and 3 are tight enough that the accordian effect is nasty if you’re in the back. So, I managed to stay in the top 30-ish most of the time. I wanted to be further up, but the field was big and fast, and I was just doing the best I could at the time. At one point, I really made an effort to move up in the field. I got to the far left of the field, and put in a hard effort through the “half moon” section on the backside of the course. I got near the top ten when a rider attacked off the front. I was already going pretty fast, so I thought “breakaway?” and went for it. I’m no breakaway expert, so this was uncharted territory for me. I caught the rider, went past him, and took a nice hard pull to the corner. I looked back to see if he was going to take a turn, but he wasn’t on my wheel. He was 2-3 bike lengths back. So, I slowed a bit, thinking/hoping maybe a group would form and I could be a part of a serious breakaway. Nope. The guy never really caught up to me, but the field didn’t either. It stayed that way through turn 4, back onto the front stretch. I decided to keep going just so I could lead a lap (hoping someone would take a picture of me in front of the big field). I found out later I had won a prime for a $100 gift card to a local pizza place. Very cool, and very much dumb luck. I had no idea there was a prime……

Anyway, the other guy eventually caught up, and I asked him if he wanted to keep going. He said “no”, so we drifted back into the pack by the end of the front stretch.

At the end of the race, the plan was to get to the front to leadout Nick. I kept moving up, and at one point was somewhat near Mike, Mark, and Peter but it was very difficult to stay with anybody. Geoff was at the front and took a very hard pull on the front to neutralize some late attackers, and on the last lap, I almost caught up to Nick. However, it’s very difficult to lead someone out when you’re behind them. But, Nick was in a really nice spot (top 5-10), and I was 2 riders behind him going over the bridge towards the last turn. Just after the crest of the bridge (near the 300 meter sign), the eventual winner launched his sprint, and snaked across the road. He had another rider on his wheel, and a rider to the left of Nick decided to try and jump after them and took and abrupt right turn atttempting to follow the riders diagonally across the road. He shot from left to right, and his rear wheel crashed into Nicks front wheel, turning it sharply to the right and sending Nick skidding across the pavement. He looked like a 1980’s break dancer spinning on his back, except without the piece of cardboard that keeps your skin from ripping off……. I missed his spinning feet by 6 inches or so as I passed him. The final corner was next, which I got through that cleanly, and then sprinted out of the saddle as hard as I could to the line for 9th place. I was happy to get a top ten at such a big race, and giddy about the prime, but a little disappointed that the team didn’t get a podium spot after such great performances by Peter, Mark, and Geoff at Superweek. Nick had some nasty looking road rash, but walked away, and his bike appeared to be relatively unscathed as well.