It's been a little while since I've posted, so I'll write a short update...
At the end of May, Evan drove up to Dallas/Fort Worth with me so I could do a crit in Frisco and the state crit in FW. Frisco was less-than-stellar, but I placed 8th in the state championship, so that was cool.
Since then I've been racing FNR at the velodrome and I did the first 2 crits in the Memorial Park series. I have my on-days and off-days, but steady improvement shows through.
Two Fridays ago I had a great performance in the 3-lap handicap, coming in 2nd. Leigh said he's going to have to give me less of a handicap next time..."Bring it on!" I say. Earlier that night, I'd attacked on the backstraight with 2 laps to go, and got lots of kudos from all sorts of people. I lost, anyways, but you don't know if you don't try, right? This past Friday I attacked in the 8-lap scratch and managed to break away. I almost had it until Shelby caught me on the homestraight. I'm getting stronger, though, and they're figuring out that they can't let me go much longer -- they'll have to chase me, and sooner rather than later. (:
Then immediately after races were over this Friday, I drove the 2.5 more hours out to Austin to race the AT&T Downtown Crit sponsored by USA Crits. I spent the night at a wonderful Hampton Inn (they are GREAT hotels), ate a wholesome complimentary breakfast, and headed downtown. Our race, a W3/4, was at 10:40am. It had rained the night before, but the roads were drying out. The clouds were lingering, and threatening more rain, but were kind throughout the race and left us "cool" (or at least shaded) and dry (except for the copious amounts of sweat). It was a great race, with lots of attacks, and I stayed with the pack the whole time, and even tried attacking once just for kicks. But I had a lot of trouble staying in the front half of the pack, and ended up at the back most of the time. In the final sprint, I gave enough to come in 10th, so I got $10 back for my efforts. I think I got in a good warmup, and I played it pretty smart, so I just need to learn how to stay up front so I can start getting real results.
There's just one more Friday night of racing left for the Alkek season, then a Texas Cup track race in July, then on July 27th and 28th I'll be at Marymoor Velodrome in Redmond, Washington, racing the FSA Grand Prix! Should be exciting...!
Maybe I'll have something fun to write about after FNR next week, when Paul and Evan are planning on coming out to watch. That's all for now, though. Thanks for checking in. (: (So much for the *short* update...)
