Nationals Criterium

After yesterday's day of sleep, I was feeling pretty ready to throw down.  Since I was carless, I just made the 15 minute ride over to the course.  We did the same ridiculous callups as on Friday (conference champions, then randomly calling schools up in waves), except the mic went out so Boise State got shouted up to the line.  I did a move out of Kai's playbook and lined up along the barrier so that I could start clipped in with a hand on the barrier.  That was good because things were hot from the gate.  A lot of early attacks came and went.  I tried following Steve Fisher a couple of times.  Nothing came of them other than hopefully a couple cool pictures.  I managed to stay up near the front for almost the entire race, trying to go with moves whenever I felt that they were good ones to go with.  At one point, the pack came around the final corner and a few of us accelerated away from the rest.  I tried pulling hard over the short finish line hill hoping that the four of us could get up the road.  I looked back and there was nobody behind me. Whoops.  I stayed off the front for the next lap, got caught and sucked into the middle of the peloton.  That's when the big move went up the road.  Whoops.

So I sat in the pack for the rest of the race and waited for my time to attack.  With five to go, Fisher got on the front and buried himself to bring the break in for his teammate, Ian Crane.  That was an incredible effort.  You wouldn't think that a tiny little body like that would be able to hammer that hard for that long.  He brought the move back with two laps to go.  My plan was to attack on the bell lap at the slight hill on the backside.  Mesa State had taken over the front and was crushing though.  I'm sure this entirely was to prevent me from executing the plan.  I mean they had to be plotting against me.  I did finish 10th in the NWCCC after all.  Anyways, it was all I could do to move up a few spots over the hill coming into the final corner.  I took off shortly after the corner for the final sprint.  Passed a few, got passed by a few.  Finished 23rd, pretty good weekend!