Kids…Always Race Pass the Finish Line
On Sunday, Peter Dawson, Sterling Magnell, Rudolph Napolitano, Sergio Hernandez and I raced a local race just 2 miles from my home.
After doing a 4 hr ride in the morning. I went home got a little catnap and headed back over to the race. As I get there I’m noticing a lot of UCI racers you normally don’t see around my hood. Such as Roy Suhtherland of HealthNet Maxis, a few Jittery joe guys, senior Tony Cruz of BMC, Hilton Clark but anyways….I was like well shit, I guess today will be hard for a local race.
We decided that today would be for Sterling and I was up for the challenge to work my ass off for one of my teammates to show them I really appreciate the effort they showed last week when they delivered me to my second MBGP in two yrs.
Rudy road great and coverd everything I didn’t cover and with the help of Sergio and peter we controlled the race. Until 15 min to go a group of 8-9 guys put the hurt on the field and put holes every where. I was caught at the back resting when the move happen and didn’t know if we had a guy in that group or not.
In the group was Tony Cruz, Roy Sutherland, Kyle Gritters, Karl Bordine, Chris Walker…there were more but do you need anymore with all those strong guys in there? So once I see we have no one, Sergio and I started to chase with the help of Neil Shirly of Jittery who had Jonathan Cantwell in the main field as well. With 5 laps to go, we are around 30 seconds behind the break. With two laps to go the break was caught on the up hill section of the course and as I pulled off, I almost hit the breaks and watched the finish for Sterling. Sterling made me nervous because when I pulled off and was riding DFL (dead fucking last) in the 120 man field, I was next to Sterling with two laps to go. Not good. We both made it to the front and 5 Star Fish started there lead-out with one to go and Sergio, Rudy, Sterling and I are right there next to them. With two turns to go, Sergio punched it and Rudy and I just slipped right in behind the 5satr train. I looked back and Sterling had lost my wheel, so all the pressure was on me. Or I was thinking…well Paul Chi is in front of me, I don’t mind letting him win…so that’s what I started to do as I saw Hilton Clark of Toyota United on my wheel going into the last turn. So I sat up and as Hilton went to go around me on the outside, I took the right hand turn extra wide taking Hilton all the way to the cones that allowing Jonathan Cantwell to dive inside for the sprint.
As I started to look up I noticed that Paul and Cantwell weren’t that far in front of me so I tried sprinting. I’m getting closer and closer and with 50m to go, Paul clipped out of his pedals, nearly crashed and that impeded on both Cantwell and my sprint. Cantwell never saw me behind him and as we got closer to the line, I though I was going to win…Cantwell put his hands up to celebrate not knowing I was there on his right taking the win away from him.
It was a good race for a local race and I wish they were stacked like this all the time.
After the race, Cantwell said to me…” I say you take Hilton to the cones. I figured there was no way possible you could recover and have a chance to win after that.”
He also wanted a picture of the finish to post on his website of “ what not to do” .
So kids…always race pass the finish line
