Pur Tour 2004

This was a really fun little race. Brand new pavement, only one left turn-that was wide open- and one short ascent. Amy and I were working rather well together. We chased down several breaks, to the point where I was starting to get boxed in on occassion. Tried for a break of our own on the prime lap. This was rather unsuccessful, way too many of them and only two of us. I had just enough left on the last lap to take the pace up a bit. Amy grabbed my wheel and ended up getting a great sprint for the finish. Would love to go back next year with the team...

Excellent course. Glad I went. Only 1 90 degree turn with a long sweeping downhill to allow people to catch back on if needed (of course I never had to use it...wink wink).

So, doing a 3/4 race was a bit of a change for me. With the speed of the first lap I thought thought "What have I done?!" as we averaged over 27mph reaching 37.6 on the downhill. Well soon there after the pace settled in to a comfortable 25.6 with 35-36 on the downhill. The climb really wasn't as bad as it looked during warmups. I actually held my own and even sometimes moved up a few spots on it.

Early on being dumb, myself and 2 others chased down 2 further up the road. Then we worked together for about half a lap and after coming up the climb all of the sudden nobody wanted to work. I gave up the ghost and let the pack come up. I sat in at the back getting whipped around while I recovered and decided I had enough and made a (sort of) dare devil decent on the outside to get myself back in the correct position. The first prime came and went then the second one came with 3 laps to go and my body quitright as we rounded the bend for the finish line for the second prime. Needless to say I fell off the back and spent the remaining 2 laps by myself. The irony of that is that had I known there were only 2 laps left I probably would have tried to kill myself to stay in contact with the group. I know between the climb and the sprint I could have taken a decent spot. My mistake today was that break, one of these days I'll learn.

I drew encouragement from the result because I proved to myself that I can hang with them and they're not as far above me as I believed them to be. I worked quite well up in the group. The downside is I found myself on the outer leading edge of the pack which didn't help my energy. Todd (for his third race of the day) did a terrific job of staying near the front the whole time. Hopefully I didn't waste too much of my reserves for Sunday's 40K pain fest at Monrovia.