I was very excited coming into this weekend as it has always been super competitive but also just a great time with family. For those who don't know of the snake alley. it is a criterium with a cobble stone hill built in 1898. they call it "The Snake" because of it winding turns. so long story short I arrived in Iowa the afternoon before my race feeling happy how I felt and with how the weather was. However, when I woke up Saterday (snake alley race day) I looked outside to find that wet stuff falling from the sky people call "rain". While most people flip out at the idea of racing in the rain, I was over joyed! I looked at the radar and it showed "50 degrees and raining" for most of the day. I knew the race would favor whoever had the most skill and guts. I say this because the criterium has a BLAZING fast decent with 3 hard 90 degree corners right after the snake. Hard enough as it is, Now we get to do it in the rain!
I get to the course and begin warming up with my good friend and teammate Josey Weik. We both do several laps on the course until we feel confident with all the features of the course. I get to the starting line and the officials give us the rules for the race. I am super stoked to race! This was my teams (ISCORP Elite Cycling) biggest team race so far with almost 10 guys out of 50 junior riders in the same field. I look around and realize how most of the riders are shivering because of how cold it is. I was one of the only riders warm because of the great warm up my coach (Matt Weik) gave me. I was ready for the 8 laps of pain!
The Race is off! I felt like I was back in cyclocross season again! Every rider sprinting full speed into the first corner, all of them ignoring the slick road conditions. I did not have the best start. I tried not to panic knowing that the race just started and we had lots of time left to pass. We all get on to the alley, I am in about 15th position, first corner 1 rider slides out! Second corner, another rider slides out and stretches his bike out making it super difficult to come around. It's Funny because I expected the crashes to be on the downhill, not going up. I get to the top of the alley, despite the conditions people are still out cheering, screaming their heads off. I loved it. I started descending passing as many people as I could to try and catch the lead group. They were about 5 seconds ahead. At the bottom of the hill I was able to latch on to the lead group. By the end of the first lap there is already a main group formed of around 8 guys. We were flying. I looked back to see the rest of the field just shattered all spread out.
We all stayed together for the next few laps my teammate driving it up the snake lap after lap! Putting the hurt down on me and all the other competitors in the break. With around 3 laps to go in the race, my Teamate David Lombardo brought the pace UP on the snake and got a small gap with Stephen Basset (last years winner of Snake Alley) they stayed away for around a half lap but was then brought back from a strong pull by Spencer Petrov. We hit 1 to go. I could see the tension in the group, all waiting for someone to make a move. All eight of us eying each other. I was lucky to have 2 teammates there.I made a tactical error of not being near the front on the last lap. The acceleration up the Snake was simply to hard and i got gapped because of how fast the pace was! I tried my best to close back the split between me and the front group. Unfortunately I couldn't pull back up to the lead. Ian McShane and I sprinted in but he got the best of me. I ended up 7th out of 50 fast juniors! It was a great day of racing! Though I didn't make the podium my Teammates Josey Weik and David Lombardo were able to pull off 5th and the win! I was happy with how I finished. Later on that day I did the cat 3's and finished 4th with my Teammate Josey getting 3rd. As always it turned out to be a great day and an awesome team effort with 3 ISCORP riders in the top 10 in the crazy junior race!
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