Pace bend cat 3s 60 miles

Pace bend cat 3s 60 miles
After spending the night with Eric Benz at his house along with fellow
houstonian Jason Bently. We headed to the start of pacebend in the
early afternoon at around 10:30. The weather was perfect, 70 degrees
pluse and very sunny. I gotto the race and got my numbers and got
everything pinned, even wore my new shorts that came with the kit. I'm
pretty sure that metro v dub has the sexiest kit on the txbra cuircuit
right now, sorry patty and Zach.
The start of the race was very slow and leisurly which always makes me
happy. The race was 10 Laps long. There were severall attacks and such
but nothing got more than 20 seconds on the field. Me, Will, and Ian
used this race as a great oppurtunity to practice our teamwork and
communication in the pack. At the start the team decieded to make me
the leader and expend their energy to try to get me the win. There
were a few times I called on Will, Ian, or Todd (one of the club
riders) to move up to the front to bring back a break that had
potential to be a threat. At one point I we had every Volkswagen guy
rotating at the front to bring back a break that had alot of teams
represented. For alot of the race nothing super interesting happened
there were no big crashes and such for the first nine laps. Heading
into the final lap the field had a completly diffrent mentality than
the begining. The entire race I was fuiling perfectly. Drank all three
my bottles and ate all my GUs. The entire race leading up to the final
lap me and my team were taking about how we where going to set up a
good leadout to try to get me up the hill first. But Ian was cramping
bad on the final lap and when crunch time was approaching we couldn't
find eachother right away and the finish was approaching really fast.
Will had made it to the front and was trying to raise the speed to try
to catch the lone rider still off the front but the pack let him go
and he was between a solo leader and a dangerous cat 3 field with less
than a kilometer to go. Back in the pack things were getting pretty
physical. I had to even had to headbut a rider to protect my position
and stay safe. We then hit the bottom of the finishing hill at 30+
miles per hour and I was holding the white line on the far left of the
road. I then started revving up my sprint and was making up enourmous
ground on everyone. That is when disaster struck and the rider.
Directly infront if me crashed with 200m to go and I ran into him
(didn't crash though) causing me to lose all my speed and momentum.
All I can do now was watch as the guy I was about to pass get third
place and Will
Get caught with 100 meters to go A for sure podium postiton loss in a
fraction of a second after spending over 3 hours getting ready for
that final charge up the hill.
Race was very fun, I love this course good job by San Jose for
hosting. Got to give a very special thanks to my teamates for all the
work they put in for me, so close yet so far. Also have to give thanks
to Eric Benz for letting me sleep at his place Saturday night and
Jason Bently for driving me to the race and all the way back to P-
land. Next race might be Lago.