Thursday, June 4, 2009

Things are tough all over: The Tulsa Tough Etc.

After having taken a month long break from racing crits, I was ready to get back in action. The Tulsa Tough is by far the coolest race I've ever done. This year was my first race as a cat 2 and first race as a cat 2 in general.

Jeremy and me warming up before the Blue Dome race on Friday night. Racing a crit as the sun is going down is awesome! The speed, intensity, and aggressiveness was insane.




Just getting started.....


With 120 riders going off and forming a train 2 blocks long, the jumbo trons made it easy to watch the race action. There were way more crashes on Friday then I thought there would be. At one point midway through the race, there were wrecks on every lap for something like 6 consecutive laps! I ended up getting 74th on Friday. I moved up to around 20-25th or so at what I thought was around 15 minutes to go, but it turned out laps to go. This was the fastest crit I've ever done. Average speed: 28.1 MPH


Saturday was hot! Every year the Tulsa Tough seems to get bigger. It seemed like there were way more spectators then I remember from the past years. The party atmosphere by Cains ballroom and Soundpony was crazy! It was like the crazy cycling fans you see at the Tour de France. I got 56th on Saturday.


Sunday was even hotter! I managed to stay in for half the race until I got pulled. Of the 100+ riders to start the race, only 26 finished. The officials were aggressively pulling riders. If you got dropped from the main field, you got pulled immediately!
All in all, a fun weekend. My teammate Erin tore it up it the cat 3 race with money finishes every day and a wild front flip photo sequence Sunday as seen on taos action photos.com
I was happy to make it through the weekend unscathed except for a big elbow bruise on my arm until.................



The first race of the velo June race series. The crit course was at the fire training center in Edmond. Things were going good until the 4th lap when I took off to try to bridge up to Evan. I was railing the fastest turn on the course, when my tire came unseated from my rim causing me to crash and take out about half of the field. If any of you guys are reading this--I'm sorry I caused you to wreck.
I got skinned up some, but I'm kind of bummed about tearing up my trusty Sidis.
The Foss1l Racing Tornado Alley crit is this weekend, so hopefully most of the soreness will be gone by then.

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