Marc Pro - Strava

Its been lonely racing here in Nor Cal as my team mates do the big cool races and the races that have to be traveled to.  I've tried to defend freedom against the dark-side that has shown up in the form of Team Mike's Bikes.  Sad to say, I have been losing.  Their youth and excellent teamwork has been ruling the day.

It appears that at the Wente Crit, Kieth and I were the last of the forces of good.

My Wookie, Joe Innereli had been injured in an essay writing accident at school and has last been seen slinking into his closet, to Marc Pro himself back into shape.  When he comes out of the closet he will be a welcome site.

I knew I was going to have to dig deep and use my new understanding of the force as members of the darkside began to apear around me at the start line.

The race was fast!  According to my Strava file it was over a 28mph average.  Guys were attacking left and right, even getting huge leads, but the consistent high speed of the peleton was incompatible with anyone staying away.  With nothing technical, not too much wind and no hills there was nothing that was going to beat people up enough to make them give up chasing.

I was dreading the sprint because when it is an easy to sit in race, with two laps to go suddenly everyone becomes a sprinter and starts doing dumb things which always ends up with a bunch of guys lying around on the pavement.  Pete Knudsen and I jumped away with about seven laps to go and took two Full Circle guys with us.  The four of us worked well together until one of the Full Circle guys flatted - then the field started making up ground and caught us with two to go. great.

Just as I expected, everyone became a sprinter, and of course a bunch of guys stacked it up.  I moved up a bunch, got onto Kieth's wheel and he towed me to the front and dropped me off on the evil empire's lead out train.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to follow Full Circle or Mike's Bikes, but when Full Circle dropped back I was stuck with Mike's.  Funny thing was, while trying to keep James LeBerg's wheel, his dad kept edging me off.  I was going to just let him have the wheel, being that it was his son's and all, but then I remembered that Dean had finished dead last at Santa Cruz when his son had won, so, hmm....

Luckily Dean disappeared and that solved me of my moral dilemma.  Now I was sitting on James wheel comfortably.  His teammates gave one of the best lead outs I have seen in Nor Cal (actually, it was the best).  When his last guy dropped off, we started sprinting.  It was hard to hold his wheel and not crash because his line was as straight as a meth-addicts EKG read out.  After some yelling and hand waving we crossed the line safely.  James won.  The officials who were too busy hand recording our finishing order did not notice the epileptic sprint, and recorded me 2nd (on both of their papers) and a Full Circle guy third.

 

Thanks for the photo David Cheung!!!

Unfortunately, the camera did not have the frame where myself and third place crossed the line, so the official, rather than going to their hand recordings did the obvious, they tied us!  Yeah, my first tie in bike racing!

Next week is Cat's hill, home of the Death Star.  My wookie says he is feeling better, so hopefully there will be at least two of us to battle the minions of evil.

Video below of Mike's kicking my teeth in....