Forest Park

Last weekend was the Forest Park crit. Pretty much the first race of the year, that actually feels like a race. I rolled over to the race from my house with Keaton. It was pretty awesome being able to ride to a race, once we figured out how to secure our spare wheels to our bags. The weather was also unbelievable. It was pretty much perfect when we left around 12:30, and by the time we raced my garmin said 85. It was also windier than it's been all spring, and only got worse the later it got. We rolled up to see a pretty stacked field. Austin was in town, Dogfish had around 30 riders, and Jonathan Jacob & Jeff Schroetlin were there too. Suddenly this race got elevated from just a local early season crit. My race was pretty miserable. The pace was really fast, and the wind unbearable. I followed a few too many moves early, and just don't have the stamina to do that over and over again, with nowhere to recover when the bunch is single file in the gutter. I was trying to bridge to the chase group and Matt Brandt came past me. I never quite got on his wheel, and probably got 50 feet from the chase group and just blew completely. Pretty sure if I'd gotten there, I could have stayed, if I'd been able to recover a bit. I got popped way too early, turned off the course and almost threw my bike off a bridge because I was so frustrated. I rolled back to the course and watched a couple guys get popped every lap. It made getting shelled hurt a little less, because I'd at least been active in the race when I was there. Thinking about it today, I'm reminded how much I love racing my bike. And how much I love crits. I've raced everything but track, and I'm pretty positive there's really no better form of racing, and nothing nearly as exciting to race.