Athens Twilight

Saturday was the Athens Twilight. Andre and I went down with Evan along. We left Asheville around 6:30 am and made ouw way towards Athens, we arrived down there around 9:15 and had to find a place to park and registration. These projects took about 20 min. I started getting ready for my first race at 10:15. The weather was great, not too hot yet, and no rain (yet).

I lined up for the Masters 30+ race, their was only about 40 riders or so in the field with most of those being cat 1 and 2, the top 10 would qualify for the race tonight. The race started off fast, but smooth, I was in the middle of the field feeling good and rolling along. Then Jason Sprouse from I 9 started the attacks and they didn't stop, I eventually got shelled off of the back with about 10 min to go, but I wasn't the only one so I kept going just to finish the race and stay warm for the Cat 3 race in about an hour. I finished 23rd.

When the Cat 3's started lining up, they took the line before they were supposed to and I had to line up at the back (this would become a problem). The race took off and was moving pretty well, it felt sketchy for a 3 race but I was going to find Andre and just move up slowly. On my first attempt to move up, I got behind a few riders that ran into each other on a flat in the straightaway (is this a 3 race?). This caused the first gap that I had to make up. The corners were also causing big problems for some riders, so the speeds at the back were going from 17 mph back up to 30+ mph at every turn, this was getting really tiring. On my next attempt to move up, some guy just hit the curb on another straightaway (are you kidding?) this caused a gap right before the turns, so now I had to accelerate and decelerate 3 times on this side. People started coming off the group and eventually I got caught behind one of those guys and could not close the gap back to the field, my day was done and no racing that night. Andre raced a smart race and got 17th to qualify for the show, where he finished 5 th among a field that was filled with mostly 1's and 2's, congrats to Andre.