Vacaville GP

I showed up to the Vacaville GP not really sure of what I was getting myself into. I had overheard on local group rides that there was a hill in the course. When I got there my dad and I walked around the course once. The course itself is over a mile long! When I saw the hill I wasn't too worried at first as I knew that it was a straight up power hill. After walking around the course and doing the usual warm up/goofing around with teammates, we lined up at the start. I was already not feeling to well, I had a stomach ache and was tired and nauseous all over. At first I thought it was the usual stress you get at the start of any race ( I later realized that it was because I was sick). When the race started, the first lap was pretty contained with almost no attacks or surges. A few laps in a break of 4 including local junior Sam Bolster. I had watched the previous race and saw that the winning break went very early on. I decided to make my move and bridge up with 13 laps to go (out of 15). Within 1/2 a lap we got brought back. I stayed middle/front of the pack for most of the race until 5 laps to go when on the back side my bottle came lose and I had to slow down to fix it, this brought me to the back of the pack. With 1 lap to go I managed to move up to top 2o on the hill, but unfortunately I was pinched between two riders in the last turn who just could not hold their line. That meant that coming out of the last turn I had fallen back to about 30th. Realizing that sprinting for 25th would be stupid and dangerous, I just shut it off right there and drifted back to about 40th. Hopefully next week at the Giro di San Francisco I can do better and get some upgrade points!

Thanks for reading,

-David