Saturday, February 21, 2009

Snelling

Snelling is one of those too flat for me races that I avoided for my first 2 seasons.  Even today about halfway through the race I reached down for my water bottle and went from 2nd to 80th place in the peloton.  I definitely prefer the races with the big hills that tend to thin the pack a bit.

But, it's a big turnout race for our team, so I did it last year and did it again today.  According to the pre-reg numbers we had the 2nd biggest team after Rocknasium with 9 riders.  

The team rode incredible today.  We had guys attacking, counter attacking and getting 1 or 2 guys in every break.

I had a bit of good luck late in the race.  We had Hutch and Rich up the road in a break of 5 and me and our other 6 guys were patrolling the front of the field.  I kind of lost focus for a bit and found myself about 50 riders back with Paul and I told him we better get to the front.  So, I was motoring up the right side of the field and just as I got near the front I noticed that Metcalfe (Specialized) had a gap in front of the pack, so I didn't have to accelerate too hard to break away from the pack, but it took just about everything I had for a mile or 2 before I caught him.  We both really buried ourselves to stay ahead of the pack that started to get real close, but after a couple good turns and some really hard pulls we had a safe gap.

A few miles later we caught the break and with 3 of the 7 in the break, I was part of a 1-2-3 Morgan Stanley sweep at the finish!

Great teamwork today guys!


4 comments:

Manley Man said...

Congrats! I would have lost money if I thought you'd win this race given your love for the hills. We're all in trouble now ;)

phipps said...

Todd, thanks. I thought I'd see you out there. Clark looked strong, but could have used a few teammates.

Unknown said...

Sounds like the polo fields workouts dragging everyone around in circles are really kicking up your Crit skills.
Exciting race report and congrats!

pedro said...

i need to do more spin classes... sheesh, nice work by the climber on the flat course!