Saturday, June 17, 2006

Renningelst

Today Ulric Deyoung, Alexi Martinez, Chris Stockburger, Brandon McKeever, Scott Jackson, and I did an under 21 race called Renningelst. The race was 140k long. We did 2 large 20 k loops with 2 climbs. The first climb was about 1.5 k long that went up to 10% in the last 300 meters. The second climb was very gradual and not very noticeable. Then we did 10 x 10 k laps that had one 800 meter climb that wasn’t very steep. There were also a bunch of small roads we rode on, but the wind wasn’t so bad today. So those roads weren’t much of a factor. The crazy thing about today was the wining move went on the first climb, about five k into the race, nine guys got away. We had Chris in that move, so we just followed wheels for a while. Some of the Belgian kids got very mad at me for doing this. Two at different times grabbed my jersey, pulled on it, and yelled at me for sitting on. Then the race situation changed about halfway though. Chris dropped out because he had bronchitis for a while and couldn’t breathe. The break was about three minutes up the road at this point. Four riders also were off the front of the break going for the win. We all tried to follow wheels to get up the road but nothing got away. Eventually Scott got in a group that caught the group going for fifth. Then some riders surged on the side of him and he crashed. He dropped back to my group. Brandon and Alexi were in the third group on the road sprinting for 27th place. Brandon got 29th and Alexi was 33rd. Scott, Ulric, and I were in the last group on the road. I think I probably could have gotten up the road with another group if I didn’t follow so many moves at the beginning of the race. My next race is called Geluwe and is on Tuesday. Hopefully I will keep improving.

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