Houston grand CAT 4s/ Jr open

Finally a race that was close. I woke up this mourning and loaded up all my equipment and my nutrition. On the drive up to the race we past Corey on the highway. Well we pulled our car in front and took the exit on the left while Corey took the one on the right, oh shoot. We already screwed up. We then got lost following the horrible directions from TXBRA. We eventually got there in time to watch the 35+ 4/5. Pearland had two guys in this race. We had James Smith and Paul Wallen. As the race was going on me and my dad found the rest of the team and put our stuff down. as the ended James and Paul finished with the pack and never put themselves in danger. The next race was the 35+ 1/2/3s. In this race Pearland had Dan Morgan and Rich Schmidt. As this race was underway I went back to the car to get ready for my first race of the day, The CAT 4s. When I got my stuff ready I went back to the start finish where Dan was set up and I got on his trainer. As I was warming up Darrel came holding a Fossil on a single legged tri pod thing. At least we had one photographer for the team there. Eventually I got bored of warming up so I took off my helmet and sat on my bike's top tube to watch the rest of the race progress. I noticed as the Sun came out from behind the trees that it suddenly got alot hotter. So I put on some sunblock and grabbed Dan's favorite Houston Astros hat and put it on under my helmet. I thought this was funny because I knew this would so something to to mentality, and I was right. After a 2-3 laps of me wearing his hat Dan came around and chunked his water bottle at me. This bottle hit me across both my knees and caused sharp pains, Thanks Dan : ). As the race finished Dan got pinched in the final corner but still got and got a top ten. As for rich he stayed upright and got 11th.

The next race was mine and I was ready for it. at the start line I looked and noticed that we had almost a full field of 50. The race started out slow and I moved my self to the very front of the pack and sat there waiting for something interesting to happen. But nothing happened so I decided I was going to be in the mid pack and chill. While I was sitting here I did almost no work and stayed up right till the final 2 laps. With two laps to go I was in between two big guys and was bouncing off both of them till I got pushed to the back of the pack. With one lap to go I was riding mid pack and I decided to move up on the inside. SO the whole time I was riding to the turn around I was taking wind. and on the way back in the tail wind I got in the middle of the pack around 20 deep. as we hit the two left turns I moved up around five positions through both the turns and started my sprint from 15 back. I was able to move up to 11th and got 11th for the race. My next race was in 1 hour so instead of stopping I got pinned and rode around with my of my Jr friends for the next hour.

The Jr open and the woman open where both combined to make one big field of 30. This was even better for me because I'll have more pack handling skills and inflict pain on a bigger group of people. As the race started I waited till the field was moving at a consistent pace till I attacked. When I attacked the whole Jr Field was on me like Bees on honey. Well after the field caught me I was reintegrated into the field and got ready to attack again. And I did. This time I got in a four man break with Me, Cody, Trent, and a woman racer. This got the rest of the field in a panic because we would have towed that Woman to victory. one we got caught I sat in the pack again and got ready to do some more damage. As the field went around the corner the two VW woman attacked the field. this strong out the field. this is when Amy Counted the VW woman. But then I countered the counter and got both me and Cody off the front. This is when we had a two man break and had a small 5 second gap on the field. This is when Cody kept saying "c'mon man lets work!" But I just smiled and said that I wanted to go back to the pack and attack again. He didn't like this response so I did a little rotation with him till I dubbed the speed down enough to be caught by the rest of the field. I then sat in again till 2 laps later when I attacked again, This time it was for the win. Me and Cody both got off the front a second time but this time we where working well together and slowly started to get a big gap on the field actually with 3 laps to go we had a 38 second gap on the main field. but when we got to 2 laps to go I directly attacked Cody. He caught on and he did a second counter attack. Looks like the cat and mouse tactics began. With one lap to go the pace really slowed down. I attacked one more time and he did a quick counter. after this maneuver we where both hesitant to pull and really slowed down. Heading into the last two turns I was on the front and he wouldn't pull through (this always happens with me in Jr races). Well with 400 meters from the line I moved to the right hand side of the road and blocked the good part of the draft. with 300 meters to go I unleashed a full sprint effort. harder then I thought I could push my self. But I had to go extra hard, I was sprinting from the front. I got first in this race by around one bike length. After the race I was heading to the podium for my prizes. It was awesome to be the #1 guy on the podium again it's been awhile. While I was on the podium I got lost of pictures and I won a S-works D2 helmet.

The next race was the CAT 3s. In this race we had both Dan and Rich in the threes. early in the race, around the first 4 laps there was a crash from someone touching wheels. this made Trey Copeland crash ("Tacod" his zipp 404) along with teammate Rich. Rich wasn't hurt but he now crashed more in a week then I have in the past year. At-leased he didn't get hurt. As the race went on Dan got Pinched out in the sprint and just made it into the top ten.

Recap

Pearland was noticed in the races today and got several top ten finishes so it was another god day team wise. As for me I still need to practice a Field sprint to become a better bike race. there's always next time.