St Augustine Stage Race 9/12-9/13/09

I am a couple weeks late getting this written, but better late than never. I drove out to St. Augustine watching the looming clouds build. It was dry when I got to the course which was set up in a parking lot that was part of the St. Johns County office buildings. It was flat, but a little technical with a couple of chicanes and some tight corners. Unfortunately the rain did not hold off for the race. I was a bit tentative driving the corners with the rain for the first few minutes of the race and as to be expected there was a crash. I was caught behind the crash and had to chase back on to the main group. Thanks to Ken Sallot from Cycle Logic for closing the last bit of gap for us. We reintegrated and I quickly made my way to the front. No more getting caught out if I could help it. There was a break of two riders up the road and I started the work to try and close down the gap. Unfortunately we never made it. With 1 lap to go I took a hard pull hoping to set Eric up for the field sprint. As I pulled off Eric came by jumping just ahead of a couple lapped riders in the last corner to take the field sprint for 3rd.

The Time Trial was scheduled for 7:30 the next morning, so we headed off to dinner and then crashed at the hotel. The 5 AM came too quickly and we packed things up and headed out to the TT course. It was a short 4.5 mile flat course. It was still raining, so it was hard to get motivated to warm up. I took off and got up to speed. When I checked my computer I was a little worried as I was doing 31 mph. I knew this was too fast, so slowly dropped the speed and doing 27 coming into the turn. The way back was going to hurt after going out to fast and it did. I ended up finishing the TT in 10th place.

The road race was a combined Category 1,2,3 field and we were doing 64 miles on a flat loop. The first couple laps were pretty intense until a break formed. Things calmed down and I even tried to bridge up to the break at one point. I did not make it. The field settled in as they were happy with the break. Eric took 1st for the Cat 3s.

It was a good weekend for 352 racing with Amy, Eric, and David Monismith taking home trophies for their overall accomplishments.