2010 road nationals

My first race was the road race, which was about 25 miles. We started with no immediate crashes and the pack stayed together until the third lap. There was a break that included Phillip O'Donnell, Daniel Parks, Dylan Drummond and me but there were many surges that I ended up falling back. I decided to stay with the pack to try and chase the leaders down but the gap was over a minute. At 200m to the finish line, I took off and won the field sprint getting fourth. The next day was the crit. Jack and I didn't get a good start because we were not in the front. Jack was pushed to the fence and he was also behind a crash at the first turn. This caused us to miss the lead group of 2 that stayed away. I was in the second lead group of four riders, which included Dylan, and Jack was in the main field. The lead group of two lapped the main field. I didn't want to get caught so I asked Larry what the gap was between us and the 2 leaders. Since the gap was 15 seconds, we increased our speed and never got caught. At the end, there was a field sprint and I finished in 5th place. Jack, on the other hand, at 2 laps to go he almost bridged up to my group getting 7th. The last event was the time trial, I didn't feel as fresh as the other two days because I did most of the work in the crit. I did though push my pace for the first half of the time trial at a fast speed but couldn't maintain it as I approached the hill. I got 7th with a time of 18:40.

-Matt Valencia