Tuesday nights is Eldo night. One hour of crit racing. Good times, right? Usually. Because we only have a certain amount of space and time there are 3 different races on course at the same time, like I have mentioned before. Because of this Velosport always has good numbers in the 1/2/3 race. This week was no different. The cat.3 kids have been trying really hard to get a result out there with no luck. They finally snapped Tuesday. As the bell rang for preem one, a small group had a gap on us and was rolling. Kirk was in there, and would have taken the preem. No doubt about it. Before he could get a chance two of our cat.3 guys went to the front and damn near blew themselves up to bring them back. They were both spent and had no chance of getting the preem regardless. All they did was chase a teammate down (a HUGE No No). Now we had to set it up for one of our sprinters. He jumped with the current and always point leader toward the line. The points leader tends to drift over on you if he feels you may get around him. He did that to our guy, and paid the price. As he drifted over and started bumping with our sprinter he lost control and went down.....hard. Broken clavical and concusion. He's out for half the season. All of this in 3/4 of a lap of racing. Stuff happens fast out there.
The 3's never did get their poop together that night. One of them managed to sneak in for 10th place, but that gets him nothing but 1 point. After the race I was none too happy, and told them never to chase a teammate again. They didn't want to hear that. They got pissed and I figured, let them cool down. I will do the same, and everything will be good tomorrow.
Wednesday, I send and email to the racers saying, please remember to check before you chase to make sure you are not chasing a teammate. That started a flurry of emails, and shit talking the likes of which i have never seen. I tried to keep things quiet and respond to each person privately, but they decided to respond back and cc all kinds of other people. They left me no choice. They want to race, then they will get to. Now the elite team and the club guys will race AGAINST each other out at Eldo. Due to categories we never race against them or with them i should say at any other race. So Tuesday nights is a little strange for them. The 3's have no chance of catching us if we decide to go in a break. They can chase all they want, but they aren't going to catch us. They also don't have the sprint speed and the knowledge to get position to contest the sprints. It will be a good leraning experince for them. They are good racers, and I hope this will force them to become better racers. I know they are frustrated and want to go hard, and if we have someone up the road (we almost always do) they can't ride hard. It finally got to them Tuesday. No hard feelings though. They are just going to have to step it up now.
This weekend is State Crit Champs. One of your sprinters has good form right now, so I will be watching out for him Saturday. Sunday is a 81 mile road race. Not very long, but it will be touhg. The nice thing is they are scoring the 2's seperate from the pro's so as long as I am the first 2 across the line I get to claim it as a win. Sweet. That's 10 points I really need. If I can get out of this weekend, and hit mid-season with 15-16 points I will be looking good for the cat.1 upgrade at the end of the season.
Until Monday.......
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