Zanesville Criterium

It's been a few weeks since I last updated but not much has really gone on. After Mont Pleasant, I haven't raced. I did however racked up a lot of miles and hours. Record high of almost 67 hours, nearly 1100 miles for the month of June. Not too shabby. In all honesty, racing keeps my hours/miles in check. In that time span, I did get bitten by a dog during a training ride and was put on antibiotics. That knocked me out for a week. While I could somewhat do the power, it was very miserable. Once I was off of it, I got back into some decent form.

So on Saturday, headed to Zanesville for the Yellow Ribbon criterium. A nice fast 6 corner course. The corners flowed well and you didn't have to use brakes. The earlier fields had good turnout but once again, the 1/2/3 field was a little lacking. I seriously think Ohio should start either A: combined 1/2/3 with no separate 3 field, or B: make it 2/3 (and screw the 1's), especially for these smaller races.

Anyway some 12 of us started and we got to business fairly quickly. In a few laps, the winning break of Shawn Adams, Brent Martin and one other guy rolled off the front. Andys was also in there but was dropped out of it. I saw the move go and was sitting 2nd or 3rd wheel and really thought about trying to go and make it across. But it was that situation of do I put all my eggs in one basket and try to make it? or just wait and see. The gap was growing and I knew if I didn't make it across, I might be spit out the back. I decided to just sit and wait.

Our group chased and held steady for a while, some 15-20 seconds. John made a dig and could almost taste it, but just didn't have that extra bit to make it across. The thought did come across my mind to bridge up to John and get the two of us across but the gap wasn't large enough. I probably would have just brought the whole field back together. So I played the teammate card and sat in and waited. John eventually came back in.

Laps later, we were at a point where we were not going to catch the 3 off the front. John rolled away again at around 6 to go and it was a waiting game. Matson and another guy were 1-2 and I was third wheel. The 2nd guy wouldn't pull through and we went 2 or so laps around with Matson driving the field. 4 to go Burns jumped to get up to John and then just kept going. He had a gap and into the headwind section, I attacked to bridge up to Burns.

We both got clear and worked hard to make sure the field would not catch us. Going into the last lap, we were pretty much clear as long as we didn't play too much cat and mouse. Burns attacked into the last corner and that was pretty much it. I chased but he beat me by about a bike length.

5th place. Not too bad and I've finished 5th in all the crits I've finished. Hopefully I can change that to a better result in the coming weeks.

Tour of the Valley is next up and will be a major beat down. Lots of heavy hitters and my goal of the weekend is to survive.