Tour de Bloom (Crit)

We had made camping reservations a long time ago in Wenatchee for this race.  A few weeks back I decided I needed a break and planned on skipping out on the Omnium.  A few days before my wife bought a brand new SUP board and saw that the weather in the Seattle area was going to suck starting on Saturday.  Wenatchee was looking good so since we still had the reservation we decided to head over.  Since I wasn't planning on racing I decided that I would only do the crit and just hang out and enjoy the weather the rest of the weekend.  My start time wasn't until 7:00pm on Saturday so that would give us plenty of time to hang out.  I'll spare you the boring details of our day and skip right to the race.

I knew the field was going to be small and normally I might opt to just wait and jump into the Pro/1/2 field but their start wasn't until almost 9:00pm and I wanted to be well into food and beer by then.  Minus a little wind the weather was perfect but as I warmed up I wasn't too excited.  I told myself that if the field was too small I'd just pack it in and head to the bar......Easier said than done.  Once you've kitted up, warmed up and rolled to the line it's hard to shut your game face down and just call it quits. so........

They had a pretty cool atmosphere going on around the course with loud speakers everywhere and several beer gardens.  We took off and right away the pace was really high.  After about three laps I took a look back and noticed there were already only five of us left.  I looked at who was still there and all of them were strong.  It was going to be a tough 40 minutes of racing.  Along with me were Martin(Este), Greg(Cycle-U/Apex), Warren(Fischer) and Jeff(Oly Ortho).  Jeff had already told me he was just glad to have made the break.  I knew Greg and Martin would want to try to take solo flyers off the front and Warren was going to be my stiffest competition if it came down to a field sprint. 

The primes were all for Omium points and since I wasn't doing all three races I told everyone I'd back off on those laps.  We got in a good rhythm and all took turns at the front.  On every lap someone always tried to attack on the short climb to see if they could get away.  I could tell when we were about half way through the race that no one was going to get dropped from this group. 

When the officials turned off the clock and started counting down laps we saw the rest of the guys up in front of us.  We were going to lap them before it was over.  I started to think about the finish and decided that with about three to go I was going to try to slot into 3rd or 4th wheel and camp out there.   Then, with one to go I made a plan to attack as hard as I could about halfway between turns two and three.  Hopefully I was the only one with that plan.  We started the final lap and right after we crested the climb and pushed through corner two I slowly started to shift up.  BAM!  I swung hard to the right and went as hard as I could.  Just before I reached corner three I took a quick look under my shoulder and saw I had a small gap.  I took a really aggressive turn through corner three and had a great line.  I shot out of corner four in my 23X11 and kicked as hard as I could.  I was all in and just prayed no one was on my wheel.  With about 50m to go I knew I had it but still went full boar to the line.  Thank God I did.  If the line was a few meters further Warren may have been able to pip me at the line.