Filed under "Better late than never" by Micah
The morning of Cherry Pie crit started with a very good warm-up. The day before (Apple Pie ) had been a distaster from lack of it. The juniors had a spot where we set up our trainers and all got warm before the 15-16 race.
At the start line the field was huge. There was about 40 or so riders who came out to do a 20 minute suffer fest. The sun was shining but the roads were still wet from the previous day and night of rain.
We had somewhat originated a small gameplan of being very aggressive considering the day before we got our butts handed to us by Davis Bike Club who rode a very offensive
race. So when the whistle blew, power-house Ben Barsi-Rhyne was off the front with a couple of other guys, and, of course, Taylor from Davis was there too.
The gap yo-yoed back and forth from like 5 seconds to out of sight. Taylor, as I mentioned, was in the break, which was like 8 guys, so Davis didn't have to work.
But as soon as the gap would start to balloon Alex Wick would try to bridge up. The
group would pull him back, then we would slow for a couple of corners until someone else would have a go.
This happened alot and we would get really close to it all coming back together. There was one really close bridge from Alex that everybody followed. We got close but then he eased up and I could see Ben on the front driving the break trying to
keep it away. I was thinking, " I need to get up there to keep him out of the wind so he can be fresh for the sprint".
The chase died and we started to drift back so I went up the right hand side with a
guy from Tiene Duro on my wheel. We instantly had a gap and I drilled it to get up to Ben. I knew I wouldn't get any help from Mr. Duro because he had a teammate in the break, so I put my head down and burried myself.
We made the junction almost a lap later with 1 to go. Two corners recovery, then to the front. I led up the finishing hill with Ben on my wheel.
Right at the turnaround I was passed by Taylor Kuphaldt. On the descent though, it turned into an attack. I covered it, and we went through turn 1 at almost 37 mph. On the back stretch Taylor saw he didn't have a gap so he started drifting back. I decided to keep the pace high and rode at the front.
After the backside Taylor launched another attack going through the last two hard corners. Tiene Duro covered it this time and I grabbed 4th wheel. When we slowed again, it was going up to the finish line. I came by everyone with Ben on my wheel and started the leadout.
I've had much faster and better leadouts but considering the time of year, it wasn't
bad.
With about a little under 200 meters to go, everyone came flying around me for the
sprint. I was totally wasted, so I crawled in at the back of the break for 10th. I
couldn't see who got the win but the announcer was yelling, "AMD Discovery really
knows how to pick them!" so I knew we got it.
Oh...and by the way,Ben gave me his primes AND the rest of his pie!
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