Tour of Idaho

Last weekend I went to the Tour of Idaho in Boise. The first race was a circuit race the length of a crit but for some reason they didn't give free laps. I wanted to save my energy for that night when we had a hill TT. In the circuit race I stayed in the pack and saved my energy. With two laps to go Casey William attacked. My main competition, Jackson, Long, chased him down. Casey was caught with 1 lap to go but does mostly mountain biking and didn't know he was caught. He pulled for the next half lap until another rider attacked. I got on Jackson's wheel and he started his sprint even though we were still 350m out. I stayed on his wheel through the last turn and then sprinted at 200m. I won by 3 bikes lengths. There were no time bonuses and they gave us all pack time. This race is awesome because the leader gets a yellow jersey to keep.

That night we had a 5k hill TT. I started out a little to strong and slowed in the middle but finished fast. I finished 23 seconds of Jackson who won and 2 seconds off Travis Monroe.

On Sunday we had a crit. The first thing I did when I got there was to find out who Travis Monroe was. I knew I needed to attack him and get 2 seconds on him. We had a 40 min race. I attacked at least every other lap. I had two attacks that stuck for a while. One of them I sat on Jackson's wheel while he sprinted for a prime and right when he slowed down I attacked. I stayed away for half a lap. Another time Casey attacked and Jackson chased him and then I attacked. That time I stayed away for a lap. Through all my attacks Travis helped pull Jackson up to me. I talked to them after the race but they weren't working together. I think Travis's plan was to race for second. With 8 laps to go I knew I couldn't get 23 seconds on Jackson and got him to attack with me but when had a gap he didn't pull through. For the last two laps Travis was just looking at me. I slowed down to get on his wheel to jump him but he slowed down also. With half a lap to go we were both 10m  off the back of the pack. We were coming up to the last turn which was 400m from the finish. I attacked going into the turn on the outside. There was only a few inches between my handlebars and the pack and a few inches between my wheel and the curb. When I was equal with the pack I yelled right so the field would swarm behind me closing the way for Travis. The group sped up into the turn and Travis tried to take the inside. He was going to fast on the inside through the turn and had to slow down almost locking up. I led the rest of the way and won. There were definitely some gap between riders and I think I got a little more than a second on Travis but the official gave everyone pack time. I was confused about making it pack time because we had timing chips and it wasn't any extra work, but who cares I had fun and won 2 out of the 3 stages!