The criterium was the final stage of the Gate City Grind. Heather and I went to the course early to watch my teammates race the Masters 35+ field. It was fun to watch the teamwork and they had a good race. Jim ended up on the podium for the GC.

Heather’s race was OK, but she was lacking the snap she needed for crit riding. She didn’t really have much to worry about though since it would have been pretty hard to lose the GC. She ended up second and won the overall GC. My race was decent. It was hard from the beginning and after two days of racing your legs really hurt when you have to dig to hang on to the surges. I was active at the beginning then settled into the pack. There were a lot of attacks and the field became splintered but I was able to hang on for the most part. I made a big tactical error by not going with a small group that attacked the field. We still had a GC contender with us and what I thought, at the time was a good-sized group. But when I looked around I realized we only had a handful of riders. I guess there were a few casualties from all the attacks! Then the GC contender attacked so hard that no one could get on his wheel. So I was stuck in a chase group again. But there weren’t that many people up the road so I ended up getting 10th in the crit and didn’t lose my GC position so I ended up 9th overall. As another training race I thought the weekend was another success. Now it’s time to rest and get ready for Superweek!