2-Wheel Crit (Santa Rosa) Race Report

James and the team scored a great result up in Santa Rosa. Below is James' report.

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Race: 2 Wheel Criterium (aka Santa Rosa Corporate Crit)
Category: Men's Pro 1/2
Teammates: Rand Miller, Tore Nauta, Chris Crawford, Scott Rodamaker
Placing: 3rd of 60

This is the same course as always, a corporate business park, wide turns, lots of bot dots and plenty of wind. Some of the teams were better represented than AV on this day, Lombardi, BPG, McGuire, & Cliff Bar all had decent teams there.

The race started out fast and stayed fast for the entire duration. There were lots of attacks. About mid way through the race Tore got into a break of about 8 riders. The break was motoring along and increasing the gap by a few seconds per lap when we came upon a few riders who had crashed out of the break. I never saw Tore among the carnage but from what was left of the break ahead I could visibly see it did not include Tore. At that point I assumed he had crashed. Without Tore and Joel Robertson (who had also crashed out of the break) the break came back in a short amount of time.

Rand did a great job attacking and following attacks, pretty amazing given he did the Sattley TT that same morning, drove all the way to SR in time for the 3:45pm start and still had some legs left to put the hurt on people. I maintained a position of mid to top 1/3 of the pack the entire race. There were 11 primes for beer, wine, flaming toilet seats, and a stereo system. I didn't go for any of them. When I saw 10 laps to go on the lap cards I started slowly moving toward the front. With 2 laps to go I was about 8th wheel when Rand attacked, perfect move, this allowed me to slot into a great position as people were chasing, Rand was caught just before we got to the bell lap. I was 5th wheel behind 3 Cal Giant riders and Kevin Klein (Rock Racing). Pat Briggs(Cal Giant) attacked into the last corner and got a small gap. I tried to go inside of Kevin Klein on the last straight but he took me to the curb, I slowed a little and tried to come around him on the other side when he proceeded to move from the curb toward the middle of the road. I arrived at the line just behind Kevin for 3rd place.

This was a great race for me as my top end finishing speed is starting to improve again. Rand rode a great tactical race. After the race I found that Tore did indeed crash because his tubular tire rolled in a corner. He was OK, suffering only scrapes and bruises.

Thanks for reading

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James