Ending the season, starting the next

   When my 2013 road and track season come to a close, I look back to observe my strengths and weaknesses throughout the season. A strength could be my improvement on TT's and a weakness could be that I couldn't stick on the climbs with Adrien Costa at Road Nationals. I also look back on achievements and if I reached my goals for the season. 

 

   At Road Nationals I rode what turned out to be a great time trial for me, coming in 12th, which is a great improvement from the other TT's I did earlier this year. In the Road Race I rode as best as I could for the team and for myself. I chased down attacks early in the race taking some of the pressure off of our team's climbers. I also paced Nick back into the break after he was separated on the very technical descent.   

   At Track Nationals I was pretty upset when my 200m time was just a tenth of a second away from qualifying for the match sprints. After that I was pretty much out of the omnium so I decided to focus on getting Gage the omnium win and just go for individual wins. I ended up 6th in the points, 5th in the individual pursuit, and Gage ended up missing the omnium win by one point. On the bright side we ended up winning the 3k team pursuit with Chazmichael Morales. 

   Overall my season wasn't great but I had a lot of changes, a new team, a new coach, and just starting high school. Next year I'm hoping for a MUCH better season seeing that no big changes are hopefully going to happen in the next year. But even though my season didn't go as planed I still met some incredible teammates, and had the most fun I've ever had in a racing season!

Grant McElroy