The two UCI & NTC races over the weekend were at Trexlertown (Festival of Speed on Friday, Red Robin Finals on Saturday) and drew an incredibly talented field to the velodrome. It seemed like looking around half the field had olympic, world championship, world cup, national championship palmares to their resumes. The major race on Friday was a 72 lap points race with sprints every 6 laps. I was able to steal a few points early when I was positioned well. Unfortunately, after I grabbed some points a serious move attacked which I was in no position to follow after having given a good effort and that move ended up lapping the field. Its a tough game to try to figure out what to do - if you don't take points anywhere you won't place well, but if you go after points and a big move goes, you will miss out on a great result. The race ended up being what I'd consider the hardest race I've ever done. With about 30 laps to go I was just trying to hang on and find points where I could relax. I ended up 12th in the event of about 30 guys and I believe the 6th American. Good experience.
With a big rainstorm quickly approaching the race organizers decided to move the important races to earlier in the day, starting them at 4:00pm instead of 7:30pm. This was incredibly good news for Katie and I as we cancelled our hotel in TTown and figured we'd just drive as far as we could after the races ended - we just had to hope we actually got them in otherwise they'd be rescheduled for tomorrow. Anyways I felt really tired for these races and just didn't have a whole lot of gusto for them. I finished 13th in the UCI scratch race which wasn't terrible, I just probably could have done better if I was 'on it'. Great experience racing in that caliber of field and glad to have gotten the races in. We were able to make it to Cleveland on Saturday night and were home midday Sunday. Looking forward to being home a little while!
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