Volunteer Park Cat 3 Race Report

Someone sent me a link to pics from the cat 3 race at Volunteer Park. There are tons of pictures here, maybe too many to wade through ...but if you were in that race, it's probable there are at least a couple of pictures of you: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gravitysalad/sets/72157616673792496/

The race itself was pretty good. Reports were that the avg speed was 26.3, so pretty fast. We had about 8 guys in the race and pretty much everyone contributed one way or another. Olivier was very active in the first part of the race, going in breaks and also taking a prime. Greg was busy at the front as usual. He had the power and poor judgment to take a prime for an ugly maroon colored t-shirt. He opted to skip the $100 prime because, you know, "mo' money, mo' problems". Ben however got in a break and beat out a Rad Racing guy for a $50 prime. He probably did that kid a favor as he would have likely just wasted the winnings on video games. Ben, being older and wiser, knows it is money best spent on drugs and strippers. Lyle and Steve both took strong pulls up front too.

For my part, I tried to stay in the top 10-15 as much as possible, hoping to be useful. I did my best to take a couple of turns on the front to pull back breaks. Nothing stayed away very long so the race came down to a sprint. Lyle and I were both in decent, but not great, position going into the last lap. But Lyle got pinched out in the bottleneck by the water tower and was forced towards the back. Jay was at the front nailing it down the hill to string things out so we could move around. It was the right thing to do. I felt really great the entire race but I should have been about 4-5 spots closer to the front on the last lap. Trying to move up on the hill before the sprint I got caught in some traffic behind guys who were fading. I can't make excuses though, I should have been in front of them already. I got around those guys after a small delay and did my best in the sprint but had too much ground to make up and ended up about 13th. It's frustrating to feel so good and not suffer in a race and still end up with poor results... but all in all our team had a solid, active race. Fun, no matter how you slice it.

Good luck to those of you racing Walla Walla this weekend. Scott