This past weekend was the High Desert Omnium here in Bend. Saturday was the crit, which is always a blast. That went decently well for me, I was able to make some strong pulls in the peleton's attempt to chase back a breakaway, but unfortunately I made a mental error and dropped back too far with 2 laps to go and buried myself in the group. Oh well! Can't learn without making mistakes!
With the crit behind me, I focused my redemption powers on Sunday's road race. It is a super fun and on a really nice course up in the mountains! The first half of the 60 mile road race was pretty mellow with few attacks and a pretty mellow tempo pace. I stayed in the front 1/3 of the peleton, waiting and watching for anything to happen that could affect the outcome of the race. Nothing really came to be, but about halfway in, things began to actually move and morph in the peleton so I moved up to the front 1/4 to be in position for any solid moves. Nothing really came about but the pace picked up to a good clip as a paceline formed on the front. I took a pull coming into the feed zone, which made for an easy feed from Bob and Kiefer who were kind enough to sit out in the sun all day and hand out bottles. The pace calmed a little bit after the feed and we cruised along until we hit some punchy climbs. With 20 miles to go, Michael Dennis from Sunnyside, took off from the front and about seven of us followed up one the climbs. He kept punching it and with each punch a few riders would drop off. After a couple of those, I was on his wheel and after a quick look back, we had a gap. We began hammering away from the peleton, trading pulls every 30 seconds to a minute. We were able to put a 1 minute gap on the peleton and were working extremely well together. The peleton finally organized a chase about 10 miles into our breakaway and were able to close the gap down to about 35 seconds. We sat up prepared to be absorbed but they did too, trying to dangle us, so we went back to work. We were able to stay off until about 2K to go when a chase group of six finally reeled us back in. I sat in for a few and with 1K to go, I went for it knowing I didn't have a huge sprint left, with the work I had done earlier. Suprisingly, the chase group had burned energy too as I was able to snag a third place finish just in front of Mike who sat up to celebrate his overall Omnium win!
Here is an amazingly awesome video, from the lead car driver Mark, documenting the whole race!!
It was definitely an awesome way to wrap up some weekend racing!
With the crit behind me, I focused my redemption powers on Sunday's road race. It is a super fun and on a really nice course up in the mountains! The first half of the 60 mile road race was pretty mellow with few attacks and a pretty mellow tempo pace. I stayed in the front 1/3 of the peleton, waiting and watching for anything to happen that could affect the outcome of the race. Nothing really came to be, but about halfway in, things began to actually move and morph in the peleton so I moved up to the front 1/4 to be in position for any solid moves. Nothing really came about but the pace picked up to a good clip as a paceline formed on the front. I took a pull coming into the feed zone, which made for an easy feed from Bob and Kiefer who were kind enough to sit out in the sun all day and hand out bottles. The pace calmed a little bit after the feed and we cruised along until we hit some punchy climbs. With 20 miles to go, Michael Dennis from Sunnyside, took off from the front and about seven of us followed up one the climbs. He kept punching it and with each punch a few riders would drop off. After a couple of those, I was on his wheel and after a quick look back, we had a gap. We began hammering away from the peleton, trading pulls every 30 seconds to a minute. We were able to put a 1 minute gap on the peleton and were working extremely well together. The peleton finally organized a chase about 10 miles into our breakaway and were able to close the gap down to about 35 seconds. We sat up prepared to be absorbed but they did too, trying to dangle us, so we went back to work. We were able to stay off until about 2K to go when a chase group of six finally reeled us back in. I sat in for a few and with 1K to go, I went for it knowing I didn't have a huge sprint left, with the work I had done earlier. Suprisingly, the chase group had burned energy too as I was able to snag a third place finish just in front of Mike who sat up to celebrate his overall Omnium win!
Here is an amazingly awesome video, from the lead car driver Mark, documenting the whole race!!
It was definitely an awesome way to wrap up some weekend racing!
