This past weekend I raced the San Antonio Road Race and Dade City Crit. The road race is one of the hillier ones in Florida and one I like a lot. It is 85 miles long on a 17 mile circuit that we do 5 times. It is rolling throughout and not much flat. My plan for the race was to get in a move I thought looked good and try to win. During the first three laps there were many attacks, but nothing seemed to get much time on the field. At the beginning of the fourth lap I thought people looked pretty tired, so I put in a few attacks. I eventually got away with Phil Gaimon (Fiordifruta) and an Herbalife rider. We worked pretty well together, but a group of seven was coming on strong with one lap to go. With about 10k to go they caught our group. I was pretty finished by the time this group caught mine. Luckily, this group contained three of my teammates. There were attacks on some of the hills going up to the finished and I was dropped. I rolled in alone for 10th place. My teammate John Durango won and Rafael Moran teammate was 3rd, and Ivan Franco was 6th. It was a pretty good day for the team I would say.
Sunday was the Dade City crit. This course is shaped like the letter L and is less than one k long. It is very technical and also goes over some bricks on one straightaway. My team decided to make it fast from the gun. We all rode the front at the beginning and put Ivan Franco and John Durango up the road on their own. There were attacks from the field but nothing was going to catch Ivan and John if we could help it. We followed many moves and took primes as well. Eventually, Ivan and John lapped the field. Then we sat on the front of the group and rode hard in order to discourage and neutralise any attacks. During the last five or six laps we rode very fast on the front. Ivan Franco got the win and John was second. This was a pretty good weekend to start the year off with.
On Thursday I leave for the Dominican Republic to compete in the Vuelta Independencia Nacional, a 9 day, 10 stage UCI 2.2 race.
