Tour of Tuscaloosa

This past weekend I raced the Tour of Tuscaloosa. It started out with a twilight crit that my buddy Ty Magner from Loco's cycling team won. I must say that right now Ty is practically unbeatable in the crits. Going into the race I knew there wasn't a chance in hell that I was gonna outsprint Ty, so I knew I was gonna have to get in a break in order to have a chance at winning. Unfortunatly no moves got organized enough to stay away. With 2 laps to go I attacked with a strong rider and we got a nice gap. There was a moment where I looked back and started to think about what victory salute I was gonna do. But about halfway through the last lap the roaring wind was taking its toal on us, and Ty's team had the field strung out. We were caught with around 500 meters to go.
I came out of the crit empty handed and disappointed. I soon got over the disappointment of not getting a resullt and looked back on my ride with a good deal of satisfaction. I mean I don't have a bad sprint myself and no doubt I could've been top 5, but I find myself no longer being satisfied with a top 5. I've had multiple results this year, yet no win. To me one win beats 3 second places. And I did what I had to in the crit to win the bike race. I have no regrets, and honestly the feeling of knowing you did everything you could've to win the race is comparable, if not more fulfilling then a "top 5".
Going into the road race I was determined to make it a hard race. So right from the gun Frank Traviaso attacked. The man was on a differant planet today. He ended up taking 4 guys with him a dropped all except one who had a flat. But anyways I missed the move that he went with and then started my plan of making the race hard as hell. On the course there are two hills that are somewhat hard and for the first few laps a attacked up each one. The race was extreamly fast. Thirty miles into the race I looked at my computer and saw we had an avg. speed of 27.8 mph. With around 30 miles to go over the hardest hill of the day I found myself in a break of 5. We ended up rolling it and staying away. By this time Frank was all alone so we were racing for 2nd. Once again on the hard hill of the course I attacked with Rob from the Loco's team. Once again we were caught by the break with about 1k to go. Ty waxed our group in the sprint and I came in 3rd in the group which was 4th overall. When I looked at the results I saw that Ty was relegated from littering and I was promoted to third. Although I gladly took the 3rd place money I still considered myself as 4th, and found it ridiculous that they relegated Ty. I'm not supporting littering but c'mon. Don't take away a teenagers result, maybe give him a small fine or something.
Anyways I'm happy with how I rode. I rode to win, and I know Adam was watching and proud. I'm going to get some much needed rest monday and tuesday, then I head to race in Belize on Wednseday. I'll be there until April 6th. Hopefully I can get some photos up.
Thats all I got for now,

aj