Snowcone #3 B Race Report

This Saturday, CRC had four guys in the Snowcone B race – Miles Lankford, Chris Antovonics, James Wittwer and yours truly. It was an exciting day seeing as it was both Chris’s and James’ first circuit race. All I can say is, it’s great to be young! We had a field of about 60 and both Chris and James stayed right where they needed to be – close to the front. Miles and I sat in and offered a few pointers along the way, but for the most part they made our club proud.

As Bill mentioned, Saturday was pretty windy which made breakaways impossible. Once we realized this, about 30 minutes into the race, we just focused on position and energy conservation. There was one breakaway attempt about 45 minutes in that looked like it might have legs. I was in a position to see it happened and jumped across. Unfortunately, I dragged enough people with me that it was to no avail. With 2.5 laps to go, Dan King yelled, “up to 3rd position, NOW!” Hard to argue with success, so we did. With about a half a lap to go, it became obvious there was no organized lead out train. We were going too slow so there were several of us bunched up on the front – not good. To make matters worse, James spent a little longer in the wind than he should have and fell of the pace. As we made the last 180 turn for the finish line I was sitting in the front group with Chris close behind. A group of about 5 dove to the inside and accelerated but I got boxed in. As the traffic began to clear it was obvious the lead group was too far ahead so it became damage control. I held my position and finished about 10th. The acceleration was a little much for Chris, first race and all, but he still finished about 20th, or top third. Miles rolled in with the pack as well.

All in all, it was great experience for the young guys and a good fitness test for me and Miles. Most of all, it was great to finally have some teammates!