Fitchburg- Longsjo Stage 3

No wins today, no podiums either. Larry and I rode with the front group all race but didn't have it at the end.

For whatever reason, they ran us with the pro men, cat 2 men and cat 1/2 women. Further, we were started ahead of the women. Wouldn't you know it, the women caught us at the beginning of the second lap. Then halfway through lap 2, the pro men lapped us. Thankfully, from there on out we were allowed to race as usual, but two long stops in a 41 mile road race sorta makes things a bit easier than they should be. Anyway, after all that waiting around I got kind of pissed off and rode harder than I probably should have.

The leader of our race is an animal. He spent all day on the front, chased down any attacks teams launched at him and still finished second. He's got a comfortable lead going into the crit tomorrow and unless some back luck hits him I'm sure he's got it wrapped up. I think he's riding without teammates, too.

The Juniors race has some real ringers in it (like just got back from Euro camp ringers) so some of them are racing cat 4s. If masters don't like senior racers, then seniors certainly don't like juniors. "Holdja line!"

Junior gearing is kinda dumb, but whats really dumb is using junior gearing in a TT. The juniors had to use a maximum 52x14 in the TT. I was in my 53x11 pretty regularly in the TT. I'm impressed by the juniors that managed top 10s on little gears.

I got to see the pros a few times and I'm not convinced they were going much faster than us. I know this is heresay, and I know their race was over twice as long as ours and lacked our two neutralizations, but I was expecting them to fly up the finishing climb. I'm probably wrong but I thought we went nearly as fast.

Tomorrow's the crit. I'm excited.