My Nationals Recap

This year Junior Road Nationals were in Augusta, Ga. A week before Nationals started I gave my bike away to Larry Nolan, so that would not have to pay an extra fee to fly my bike out to Georgia. Which means I had to ride a bike that did not fit me for an entire week, then race Nationals. When I got to Georgia, the first think I noticed was the heat and humidity. Day by day I began to not notice the heat or humidity as much. This was because I was drinking Gallons of water per day. My first race was the Time Trial. I don't specialize in Time Trialing, and to make it worse I did not have a Time Trial Bike, so I was on my Specialized SL2 with Zipp 303's. I got a good warm up and set off. I had already road the Time Trial course the day before so there were no surprises on the course. After my Time Trial I felt like it wasn't my best and was not my worst. But I knew that the Criterium was the next day and that I would do better. Before the start of the Criterium it was hot. The team got there about an hour before the race and we started to get cold so that we would perform better. During the race I had 3 full bottles in my bottle cages and my pockets. I quickly drank one bottle on threw it to the parents. But the rest of the race I struggled to drink water. Just because the pace was so high and the pot holes were all over the road. After the race I rolled-out and road back to the parents where the parents were waiting with water and ice/ ice vests. We cooled down and road back to the houses so we could recover for our final race of nationals, the Road Race. The race started at 8:00am local time. Which is 5:00am California time. So I was a little tired as we drove up to the parking lot. But, as I started to move around I woke up and was ready to race a hard race. I came to the line 20 minutes before the start and everyone was there. So I started at the back. But, during the race I moves up with ease. On the last lap, coming up the final hill I fell of the pace of the pack. At this time I thought we still had another lap to do. So I was going to crest over the hill and drill it back in to the pack, but as I saw the finish line I noticed that everyone past the finish line were sitting up and the race was over. Even though I did not get the laps right it was my best road race I had ever done. And that is what happened to me at Nationals.