Got it.

Finally won a damned race. Here's how the jax weekend went.

Saturday was the road race in nocatee, a huge pre-planned future community that currently consists of nothing but roads. It was a 7 mile course flat as a pancake with a nice headwind coming up towards the last turn into the finish. Starting at 2.50 pm, the heat didn't really affect me as much as I thought it would. I felt fantastic the whole race, never really going into the red zone. Most of it was barely tempo for me. After the 4th of 6 laps, I learned that two guys had slipped off the front 2 laps ago. There were continuous piddly little attacks, but no chase really organized. Shame on you citrus cycling for having one of the biggest teams and not chasing down a breakaway with two guys from the two other biggest teams. Anyway, it came down to a sprint for third place. I ended up opening up my sprint way too early and ran out of gas about 100m from the finish. My teammate Kyle ended up 2nd in the spring for 5th overall and I got 9th overall. I was pretty frustrated.

Next day was the "crit" in the same area as the road race. Turned out to actually be a circuit race when we got there. ~4 mile lap straight down the road and back with two 180 degree turns. Since it was still named a crit, people raced it like a crit, constant attacks. Kyle and I made sure to cover all the moves with the major teams represented, and eventually a group of about 13 broke off the front with about 1.5 laps to go out of 6. Both Kyle and I were in this. Everyone in the break proceeded to yell at each other for the next 1.25 laps to work and not let the main group catch, but nobody actually doing any work. I took a few half hearted pulls, but Kyle really did a lot of work to drive us home. Came down to a sprint out of this group, which I was able to hold great position and shoot through a tiny hole at the perfect time to bag the win. I think it was the hardest I had ever tried in a sprint finish. The next guy was .009 seconds behind me. It's great to see the transponders work like that.

Congrats to Thomas Tran for also winning his CAT 5 race the same day.

Still need a couple more points to upgrade to 3's and begin the cycle all over again. Should be fun. What I'm really looking forward to is the collegiate road season next spring. We're going to be loaded. Our heavy hitters will have a few domestiques to help out and LMC (aka LMD or LMG) is going down for realz.

Gotta break out the mtb soon and get ready for that season which starts in a little under two weeks at FSU/who/poo/goo/etc, whatever you prefer.

Life's about to get pretty crazy with school starting and things. Should be fun.

I'm doing some major "preperation" for this race.

It really bothers me that people can't spell simple words and on top of that apparently don't even use spell check. Especially when they get paid for it, like in almost every cyclingnews.com article. The longer I'm in the world of cycling, the less and less respect I have for its aficionados' intellect.

I had better do well in this jaxonville race the coming weekend. I'd like to get enough points to upgrade to Cat 3 so I can return to getting my ass kicked and being discouraged after each race. To quote Bike Snob NYC "Winning is for dopers and sand baggers."

I want a hedgehog for a pet. Or a fishtank.