A while back I decided not to go to Athens as my team had plenty of guys much better suited to that race and I didn't feel like crashing and getting beer poured all over me. I mean look at this guy.
Tour de Moore
Keck and I decided to make the 4 hour drive down to Southern Springs, N.C for the Tour de Moore. We'll definitely be coming back to this race in the future. We were lucky enough to be hosted by the Finnin's who were absolutely amazing hosts.
Although the race was advertised as 103mi, it ended up being 110, something that would definitely come into play later in the race. We were to roll 12mi out to the loop, complete 8 laps, then race another 12mi back into town for a 500m uphill finish.
Keck and I were definitely outnumbered. Hincapie had 14 riders in the race, not to mention the 6+ riders each from Globlabike, Happy Tooth, RGF, Chemstar etc. We knew we had to play it conservative. Still, we were a little worried when 10 or so riders got up the road early in the race and carved out a 4min lead. The centerline rule stifled a consistent chase as it was hard to even make your way to the front of the pack. I finally decided to lay down some firepower in the uphill crosswind sections to stimulate the chase and it worked with the break being caught with 40mi to go.
About 30mi to go, I latched onto a good break and 5 of us quickly got a gap. I was on one of those days where I was feeling amazing and started taking big pulls. Unfortunately, a Hincapie rider who was in the break with us was reluctant to work despite having won the race twice in the past. I was trying to keep the group consistent and trying to give the other riders in the group a rest by taking long pulls.
We pulled out a 1:30 lead pretty quickly before our break started to shatter. One rider who was sitting on got dropped on the hills and my breakmates pulls were getting shorter and shorter (props to them though for rolling through even though I could tell they were hurting). A quick look back and I realized we were down to 3 riders. We held off the bike as long as we could, but were finally caught with 4mi to go. C'est la vie. Luckily Keck manned up and pulled out a stellar 3rd place in the sprint finish, nabbing us some moolah.
After hitting up the Chinese buffet, we headed back to the Finnin's for a much needed nap and a great outdoor dinner with some grilling and wine.
Brick City
Most of the people who were at the race the day before showed up the Brick City criterium. Keck and I stayed at the front and covered moves, but it was pretty obvious that the race was coming down to a pack sprint.
With 10 to go, I got Keck on my wheel and he pulled some serious bike ninja moves to stay there. At one point I took a corner with riders leaning on both my right and left shoulders. A few teams were trying to take control of the race and start a leadout, but for the most part is was mass chaos. Coming into one to go, the RGF team of Rich Harper and Jim Baldesare put 4 guys on the front. The lead rider slowed down a little too much, and fearing that we were going to get swarmed, I jumped hard and took Keck over the top of the leadout and we actually had a gap going through turns 1 and 2. The backstrecth unfortunately was a headwind, otherwise I would have easily been able to take Keck through the last 2 corners on the front. However, we were passed about 100m before the 3rd corner and Keck slotted into 4th wheel and that's the position he stayed in all the way to the line. It was a good move by the 2 of us, and jumping the leadout train was pretty fun, we just needed one more teammate to help us seal the deal.
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