The first race is in Lubbock, and so far is going really well for the team.
I was quite excited when we left Austin for the 6.5 hr drive. Even that could not darken my spirits, mostly due to the witty commentary of Jacob Dodson. We enjoyed the ride up, sharing our love for eclectic music and talking about life. Sooner that I thought, we were rolling up to our hotel, a Howard Johnson in north Lubbock. After checking in, we tried to go to Olive Garden to carbo-load to find that there was an hour wait. Evidently, people in Lubbock love Italian food. We decided to go across the street to a Chinese buffet with a Mongolian grill and (fresh) sushi. Yes. They had soo much food, and the sushi was not half bad.... for Lubbock.
The next morning, I got up at 6:00 am to start preparing for the road race. In men's B's, we had Jacob, Daniel, and I. We were doing two loops of a pretty neat course, totaling 56 miles. I find it amusing that I'm pretty sure they found the only hill within 400 square miles for us to climb up. Jacob and Daniel, both being climbers, loved the idea to flaunt their stuff and get some sexy points attacking the climbs. My plan was to hang in on their daring attacks and finish well for UT in the sprint. My main competition would be MSU and their five or six sprinters.
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Being a sprinting team, MSU decided the pace should be set right around completely stopped. If someone broke away it wasn't going to be on their dime. Unfortunately, there were no teams big enough to get good pace going. With only three guys, there was no reason for us to keep the pace high, because then MSU guys would just pass us at the end. Jacob and Daniel did a great job of attacking the climbs, and Daniel went on a great break with two MSU riders. Jacob and I figured that MSU might actually let this break stick, so we decided to bridge the gap. I guess they weren't willing to let us go, because one of their teammates on women's A reeled us back in. This was near the end of the race, but I had just enough time to recover and get ready for the sprint. I had been working and visualizing the sprint all race over and over in my mind, and I was getting excited that it was almost here. I was also on my own, with Jacob and Daniel being tired from their amazing efforts all day. With 1km to go, I was having trouble catching a draft, but was in good position at 4th. With around 300 meters to go, Roy from MSU opened up the sprint. That is a HUGE effort! I was in second and could not quite catch him, finishing second. Congrats to him for that huge effort. Sprints are usually less than 100 meters, so for him to open it up that early and keep the lead was really impressive.
The time trial, while not as eventful was still fun. It was a six mile course with two brutal climbs. I ended up finishing 2nd to (guess who?) Roy. I was four seconds behind him, and the third place guy was more than 30 seconds behind me. This means we pretty much killed. I wish now that I could have had a mic with someone yelling times in my ear, because I think I could have made up those 4 seconds and won. Congrats to Roy though.
Tomorrow is the Criterium, and it will be interesting to see how we match up in the crit. Ben took a movie of the finish from the Road Race, so hopefully I will post that later. For now, it's time to get some dinner and lay around doing homework!
