Race Report: Farmersville Road Race 2/3

Tough race on Saturday...8 laps of 6.6 miles...~54 miles total. It was pretty flat, with a lot of long straightaways and then a lot of sections with tight turns.

Out of ~70+ starters, I ended up 14th overall and 4th among Cat 3s.

I had a bad start off the line as well and i spent 6 of the 8 laps in the back 1/3 of the race. I was really hurting on the first couple of laps and wondering why I even do this. There were a bunch of turns and I was sprinting out of the saddle to catch back on after every turn. Seriously, the course was like a giant 9-corner crit.

Once we hit an hour in, you could tell that a lot of the really powerful crit dudes who usually only race for 60 minutes were slowing down. I was moving up little by little and the more I moved up, obviously the less work i was doing.

On the last lap I was moving up on the side just as an attack went off the front...in the confusion, the field strung out a little and cleared the road enough where I was able to catch on to the back of the attack, which put me at fifth wheel or so with 3 miles to go.

There was a United Health Group dude off the front who nobody was interested in chasing. There were a couple of fake attacks, but everybody was interested in racing for 2nd place it seemed.

I messed up a little bit responding to one of the fake attacks just before 1km to go and lost my solid position and ended up on the front. I stayed there a little too long and lost a couple of places when the next attack happened. I was able to catch a wheel going into the last turn, but I was now far enough back that I knew I wasn't going to have a chance to win the field sprint.

I picked a few dudes off on the finishing stretch, but I was kicking myself for losing my spot with 2k to go. I totally had a moment when I panicked and thought to myself 'what am I doing here, I don't belong here, these dudes are all 2s, how did I end up at the front?' and lost concentration long enough to end up in the wind a little too long...so I ended up sprinting for top 20 and not top 10.

Still, i'm psyched on the result. I feel like i've been just riding and not racing in races so far this season, and I was definitely racing at the end yesterday.

Andy picked up a 6th in the Cat 5 race...I'm sure he'll post a race report as well.