Despite my breakdown last night at the Twilight, I decided that I would try to redeem myself in today’s Morning After Criterium. It was a beautiful day with crisp blue skies and warm, but not too warm, temperatures. The Pro/1/2 field had a decent turnout, at least for this race. Most of the top riders had to head out for Altoona today and others probably just wanted to sleep in. So having a field of about 30 riders is pretty good.

The course was slightly different than years past, but still had the same start/finish stretch. I felt pretty good from the start but played it conservatively, not chasing any early attacks. At about the halfway point, single-rider attacks started to go off. When one of them was off I decided to try and bridge. I turned it on and bridged to him, then we worked together for a while. We got caught, but then another small break would go. I covered or quickly bridged to some of these and ended up in multiple two-rider breaks. At one point I was with my friend Rob from Pocatello and we worked together well (pictured). Most of this action was happening in the backside of the course so I’m sure spectators were wondering what was going on since I kept coming across the line with a different breakaway companion almost every other lap. I felt like I was playing musical partners. By the time the last few laps came up everything came back together. I was started to feel tired from all my work (which was the idea, this was training). So I played it safe for the finish and finished mid-pack.