Today's race was in Wilmington, DE. When we arrived, it was supposed to be exactly one hour to the start of my race, so I suited up and went to register, but I found out then that they were running an hour behind schedule because the cops didn't show up on time to close off the downtown crit course. Once they did, we had a great course to race on. This was easily one of my favorite courses.

The course was of the 'figure eight' variety, with eight corners, rather than the usual four of a rectangle. And this made for a fun course. Just after and just before the start/finish, there were two decent hills, and in the middle, there was a steep downhill. It was in the very urban downtown setting of Wilmington, DE. It was a great venue.

From the gun, three riders including Clifton Chamberlin of Harley built a small gap. I was in front of the peloton and I, nor any of the others, really felt like closing the gap. It was early, there were 18-19 laps still to come and what was the point? The gap got a little bigger in the next few laps, but still nothing huge. Eventually, Clifton dropped back to the peloton. I'm guessing he did this because he assumed the break would be caught and he didn't want to work as hard. Jess seemed to think he couldn't hang in the break, so I'm not sure what he was up to.


Well, after Clifton returned to the peloton, the break got further and further up the road. The gap was large enough that they would disappear around corners. I started asking Jess for time checks with ~15 laps to go and when I heard 19 seconds, I was scratching my head a bit. There was no reason those two guys should be adding time.

I started trying to get the pace up and I went to the front a few times and pulled. Each time I did, no one would aid in the pacemaking, with the exception of my teammate, Mark Skubis and a few other random guys--no of whom really pulled all that hard. This being the Delaware State Crit Championship, I assumed that FSVS would do some work, considering they had a lot of riders in the field. I told them as much in the race, but they never did anything. I told Skubis that I thought we'd start catching the break, but if we didn't, at 6 to go, we should bridge the gap as a duo.

Well, somewhere in the neighborhood of 11-12 laps to go, I wanted to bump up the pace, so I went to the front and hit it hard. I looked back and had a gap. Oh well, I thought, I guess I'm going for the solo bridge . . . It was decently windy--the way it can get in downtowns with large buildings. So I was a bit worried about whether I could actually bridge on my own. But I settled in and put my head down.


I had Jess giving me time checks and I started gaining on the leading two riders. I closed to within eight seconds, and had them in my sights, but I couldn't quite close the deal. They dangled out there in front of me and I kept losing time in some of the more technical turns. Eventually I started hearing time checks that were about like twelve seconds to the leaders and twelve seconds back to the peloton. I was well in control of no-mans-land. With less than five laps remaining, I started to think the peloton was gaining. They'd widdled my lead down to twelve seconds from about eighteen seconds, so I realized I'd better worry more about preserving my spot than on chasing down the front two.

With four remaining, I was hammering a straight section before the finish when I heard a rider on my wheel. I was stunned, I looked back and saw Clifton and assumed that the peloton was with him. Thank God they weren't! I told him to pull, but he wanted to rest some and I was ok with that if he'd help us close the gap once he did. I pulled through the finish and then motioned for him to take over.

Well, he did a bit too good of a job. Since I'd been out there for about 10 miles without any cover from the wind, I was pretty gassed. When we went to pull, he instantly had a tiny gap and I should have closed it immediately. But comiing into a technical turn, I lost a bit more gap to him and it only got bigger. My legs were starting to really hurt.

Clifton eventually made it up to the two leaders and I was happy to keep my fourth place. The two leaders duked it out for the win, with Clifton a bit too tired to fight, rolling in behind them. I came a short time later, followed by my teammate Skubis winning the field sprint for fifth.


Looking back on this one, it's somewhat a bittersweet result. I got fourth place and sealed up my upgrade to Cat. 3, but I came into this race reenergized to race well and knowing I could win. Had I gone with the two leaders early in the race, I think I would have won or at worst been second. But with all the knowledge of a year of racing, I still would never go with a break that early. Without the peloton being so unmotivated and poorly organized, that break would have easily been brought back. But that's racin'. They got lucky today and pulled off the win.