First off, we found out results from the previous day. In the Blue Island crit, I crossed the line in 18th, Thomas in 25th, Oscar around 45th, and Jafer in 50th.
Sunday's Olympia Park crit was a pretty interesting race. As we arrived, parked, and jumped out to go sign in and survey the course, we found ourselves more or less in the middle of a construction site. The course, which they had shortened to a crazy .45 mi, was a 4 corner circuit through one of those ugly new neighborhoods where the developer just clear cuts hundreds of acres and then builds the same house about a hundred times....the only difference was that all the houses hadn't even been built yet. This meant that in parts of the course, on either side of the street there mud pits and construction supplies stacked up very close to the edge of the road.
About 30 min before our scheduled start time, the officials called all racers up to the line to get our opinion on something. Apparently they were in a debate with one another on whether or not we should even race; on the backside of the course there was little downhill that, when paired with the tailwind on that side, made for an extremely fast 3rd corner; other than that, there was a small but potentially deadly lip running the length of the course, on both sides of the road sticking out about a foot or so from the curbs. That, on top of the short distance of the lap had the officials worried that our race may develop into a chaotic free-for-all with numerous riders lapping the field numerous times in the midst of horrific crashes in the 3rd corner. Well, I can tell you that none of that happened, and it turned into a very sane race for the amount of deliberation and worry that went on before hand. Long story short, the officials didn't actually want our input, and we kinda just sat there for about 30 minutes watching them deliberate between running 2 separate heats, splitting up the pro/1 riders from us cat 2's (which we were all for, because that would have put us in good position for the stage win), shortening the race, or canceling it all together. In the end they decided to simply shorten it to 80 laps.
Once underway, Jafer and I both got flat tires (Jafer's almost causing him to wipe out in a corner) but were back in business pretty quick after visiting the Sram neutral support pit where they suited us up with some nice Zipp 404's that they used for spares. Thomas also ended up breaking a shifting cable in the midst of the action and was graciously allowed back in after a number of free laps.
There were a few crashes along the way, most, if not all happening in that 3rd corner. Jafer came closest to hitting the deck when he started sliding out in the 3rd corner but was caught and bounced back up by the guy riding on his inside through the turn. In one especially bad episode, an Australian rider went down in the 3rd turn and didn't get up. No one wanted to move him before the ambulance arrived so the race was stopped with only 16 laps (less than 8 miles) to go! We sat there at the start line for 15 or 20 min waiting for the rider to be carted from the road, and by the time we got under way again the pain of having cooled down after a hard effort had set in as I tried to get back up to speed.
The rest of the race played out fine. When we were stopped with 16 to go there was a 4 man break up the road with a strong Bissell rider in it; those guys survived the remainder without getting caught, and as Rock Racing lead out the field in the closing laps, Thomas held on for around a 10th place finish in the field (14th in the race). I wasn't too far behind, and while we don't have any results yet, I'm pretty sure I made it into the top 25 (that's how deep prize dolla bills go).
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