OK, so it's the Fourth of July. I just watched the Whitewater parade, and headed off to Palmyra to race the Cat 3 UWW Road Race. I was wondering what would be the defining factors of this race? What will make it different? Will anyone try to shoot bottles rockets at us? Or maybe smoke bombs? Nope. Although, I collected a couple of cherry bombs. On my elbow and knee that is.
I actually had a couple of first experiences today. First race I have done without a fellow XXX team mate. I got in a break and almost liked it. Had that "Willy Wonky laid out this road and I am just going to eat it up feeling". Then, I ate it. It was a race safety class text book example. Tom from IS Corp, Kelby from UWW, and I were in the midst of trying to get the break to stick and had just started lap #3 and Tom was on the front. He paused to look back to see where the pack was in such a way that left poor Kelby no choice but to run into the back of him and lose it completely which left me no choice either. Tom continued the race unaffected by this crash, however Karma did catch up with him. When I met him after the race to tell him that Kelby had to go to the hospital because he was gawking backwards on the front, I found him at the first aid kit with more cherry bombs (from the second crash)than me.
Anyways, I hope that IS Corp, which was the winning team at this race, starts to consider race safety an important topic at their team meetings and rides. Cheers and here's to enjoying July.