Crossroads, Mt Khakis, Learning

Went down to NC to race the Crossroads Crit series and Hanes Park this past week. I stayed with the Mt. Khakis team. They were kind enough to take me under their wing and teach me a thing or two. Racing with those guys actually taught me more about racing in a week than I learned in the past few years of racing.

The racing was really good. Tuesday through Friday were night crits on really cool courses. The one course was .4 miles and we did sub 40 second laps all night I think. Adam Myerson really paid attention to what I was doing during the race and gave me some really great constructive criticism and really made me think about what I was doing and why.

Pat Raines gave me a lot of super solid advice before the races which was great in combo with Big Willy Elliston there to give me the heads up on how stuff would go down and generally make me chill out. Friday was great because I got to ride a lap with Kincaid before the start which really helped my positioning once the defecation hit the rotary oscillator.

I made the break in Saturday's race to advance my overall position to 9th in the omnium for Crossroads. Room for improvement, but not too shabby. Issac Howe really had some breakthrough performances getting into the winning breakaways in two of the races and placing second in each then cinching up 2nd overall. Barlevav pulled of the overall victory.

Gabe Lloyd rode really really well. I was impressed, but poor dude had some unfortunate mishaps and hit the deck twice. But he soldiered on like he always does.

Sunday was Hanes Park Pro/1 NRC race. I felt the best all week at this race and followed some moves. It was the first race all week I actually felt like I had some snap. I was sitting pretty coming into the last lap right behind the Mt. Khaki train when a rider towards the very front ate tarmac in turn 1 on the bell lap. So I had to come nearly to a stand still and restart. Frustrating, but incredibly encouraging that I felt like I could go with almost anything during the rest of the race.

Next up - Crit Nats!!