Breakage/Flattage
So yesterday I flatted before the race started. So I guess riding around the venue on my race wheels before the race is a bad idea.Fortunately I brought a spare wheel (race wheels are tubulars). Unfortunately my spare race wheel was an agressive build and about two years old. The course was rather rough and at some point I spoke pulled through one of the rim eyelets, causing the wheel to rub the brake. It wasn't a huge thing where I noticed it as I was just concentrating on the race but it was having an effect, three spins around and the wheel stops if you spin it by hand.
I wasn't on a good day on a tough course so I don't think absent that I would have placed well but I'd like to think I may have finished instead of being pulled with 6 to go in a race with about 35 laps. The course was a tough hill crit and technical. There was a longish big ring climb after a slow tight turn so that was great training anyway...
Gold star of the day goes to Evo rider David Duke for finishing the 30+ and cat 3/4 races, I'm not sure anybody else did that. Most people I know got blown away in the 30+, which was won by Josh Frick of DC Velo, with Evo's Dave Fuentes second. It looked like Frick pulled one of his last lap on the backside flyers to get a gap into the final turn and hold off Fuentes. Craig Clark had a win in the 50+ all but sewn up when a DC Velo guy bumped him in the last turn and took him down, so the other DC Velo guy in the break won. Hmmmmm....
posted by Mark @ 6:20 AM
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