Chico Stage Race

Last weekend I drove up to Chico for a fun weekend of racing.

Saturday was the 90 mile road race which included a brutal 4 mile stretch of gravel. After the start the pack rode pretty fast while riders tried to break away. After a few miles everything died down, a group of three riders were established off the front and the pack seemed content to ride slow and chit chat. I was happy with this since for some reason my legs felt like jello.

After around 37 miles of riding everybody became serious and we dove into the gravel section with around 65 riders, I was at the tail end with my legs still not coming around. Somehow I dug deep and made it out of the gravel with the group which had lost almost half of its riders. I decided to sit in the back and rest up before people started attacking the group again. After the feed zone hill we headed into a nice down hill. I became spun out and had to get aero in order to keep up. Then I heard bikes crashing and next thing I know I am flying over my handlebars. I broke my rear wheel and bent my derailur, but my body was fine. I received a ride to the finish and masters teammate Bubba Melcher helped clean up my road rash since the med kit was not equipped for riders with road rash. Thank you Bubba!

The criterium was fun and fast. It included five 90 degree left corners and one 90 degree right corner on a 1km course. I tried my best to go off the front but the biggest gap I ever had on the pack was only a handful of seconds. I managed to take second in a 2 man prime early on. About 20 minutes in there was another prime and a friend helped string out the pack so I could take the sprint. After trying to smash the pack to bits for 20 minutes I knew I needed to recover and moved to where I could be in the best slipstream in the pack. With 5 to go I tried to make sure I moved to top 5 and stayed there. With half a lap to go riders became really agressive and a crash happened. This unnerved me enough for riders to start taking the wheels in front of me and I finished near the back.

Thank you for reading,
Jonathan Christensen