Dragon's Challenge: My Own Private Omnium
This weekend's Dragon's Challenge races (a road race, time trial, and criterium) were originally scheduled as an omnium but when the criterium was promoted to state championship status for some race classes but not others that threw a wrench into things so the omnium was dropped but the races continued as planned.
When making my schedule for the season I had planned for this weekend as an omnium and so I decided to treat it as an omnium anyway, albeit unofficially. Once I learned it there were not going to be any cumulative points scored I probably should have just skipped the time trial altogether, but in the end I decided to take it a bit easy on the TT to save some energy for today's criterium.
I won the RR on Saturday and ended up 6th in the TT on Sunday just 40 seconds off the winner's time. This morning they announced that my race class (Masters 4/5) would NOT be considered a state championship event, which means I should have just gone all out during the TT, today's race be damned.
Anyway, today's crit was uneventful. The most exciting part of my race was actually the crash during the field sprint in the race that preceded mine. It was REALLY ugly. My family was actually at the race today and so I promised my wife that I would take a solo flyer on the last lap to make sure I wouldn't get caught up in similar ugliness.
I took off right before the last-lap bell sounded, got some good initial separation, held on as long as I could, but was caught and passed by one dude just before the line. My wife was pretty excited to see me stay upright and my kids were happy to see me finish in 2nd place. My daughter even caught most of the race on tape.
When making my schedule for the season I had planned for this weekend as an omnium and so I decided to treat it as an omnium anyway, albeit unofficially. Once I learned it there were not going to be any cumulative points scored I probably should have just skipped the time trial altogether, but in the end I decided to take it a bit easy on the TT to save some energy for today's criterium.
I won the RR on Saturday and ended up 6th in the TT on Sunday just 40 seconds off the winner's time. This morning they announced that my race class (Masters 4/5) would NOT be considered a state championship event, which means I should have just gone all out during the TT, today's race be damned.
Anyway, today's crit was uneventful. The most exciting part of my race was actually the crash during the field sprint in the race that preceded mine. It was REALLY ugly. My family was actually at the race today and so I promised my wife that I would take a solo flyer on the last lap to make sure I wouldn't get caught up in similar ugliness.
I took off right before the last-lap bell sounded, got some good initial separation, held on as long as I could, but was caught and passed by one dude just before the line. My wife was pretty excited to see me stay upright and my kids were happy to see me finish in 2nd place. My daughter even caught most of the race on tape.
Here's a photo taken shortly before we crossed the line. You can see how spread out things were down the stretch. The snarl on my face (I'm at the far right) is a healthy mix of pain from being at my max heart rate and angst from realizing I'm about to get beat.
Oh yeah... even though nobody else is counting, I'm pretty darn sure I won my own private omnium. It's an honor I'll remember for as long as I can.
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