The Road Race at Nationals was a crazy experience. I had never hit such speeds before in my life. I found myself at the start line an hour before the race began (typical). The sun was blazing down on me, it was incredibly hot. The race starts and 3 laps of crazy begins. The start is neutral until we make it to the bottom of the start finish hill. The blood was pumping at a rapid rate through the 15-16 field on a hot Saturday morning. Before we could make it to the end of the neutral zone there was already 2 wrecks. The officials decided to extend the neutral zone until half way down the 2 mile decent so wrecked riders could catch back on. This caused our rims to get very, very hot; Therefore tires started exploding left and right. After the neutral zone ended, the pace went from 20 mph to around 55 mph in a grand total of 5 seconds. I'm not going to write down some of the words that were going through my head, but you can imagine that for yourself. We hit a hard right corner near of the bottom of the hill, I look over to see 2 kids fly off the course and my good friend, Spencer Petrov, tri-podding in the grass like a total boss. I didn't know if he made it out alive, and that's not an exaggeration. I legitimately thought he was dead. At the end of the decent nothing too special happened. We road as a group for the rest of the lap except for some brave riders who tried an early break with my friend Ian McShane (who, by the way, had an amazing ride the day before, taking 3rd place at the TT) Everyone in the field had an eye on him. 2 miles before the base of the climb I am relived to see Spencer, who is alive. Cyclocross came into play for him today!
We hit the climb and I just sit on Adrien Costa's wheel, knowing that he was the best climber in the field. We get to the top of the climb
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| first lap on climb. |
and already more than half of the field had been shattered. The decent was not as bad this time. No one was working together, so a group of around 20 guys caught back onto the field. The 2nd lap was near the same. No moves went, the break-away was caught except for a move that had been away from the start. The second time up the climb I was dropped with around 200 meters remaining. I hit the decent and looked over to see Jonny Brown, who also didn't make it to the top with the lead group. We were working together for half a lap and then FINALLY caught back up to the lead group. Moments later there was an attack from Adrien that dropped me and 6 other riders. The lead group was now only 7 guys. Jonny attacked out of the chasing group to bridge back up again to the lead group. What a stud. I just tried my best to survive the last lap up the climb. It hurt.
I ended up finishing 18th out of around 90 juniors. It was the hardest race of my life.
HUGE thanks to my team ISCorp cycling and ALL my sponsors. I would like to give a personal thanks to team leaders Billy Jones, Doug Close, Doug Zell. Also to my awesome coach, Matt Weik for getting me this far. It was an amazing season.
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Finish.
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