The third and final race last weekend was Sunday’s Dutchtown Classic. This was a six-corner crit, but unlike the previous two courses, this one at least had a small hill. My legs were pretty toasted from the previous day’s run, but I decided to race anyway. My teammate Grant was racing again, and once again he had a good shot at winning. So I figured I’d try to do what I could to help.
Again the race started fast, then settled down a bit. There was a somewhat strong headwind on the downhill backstretch, so nobody really pushed the pace there. After a couple more turns we went up the somewhat steep, block-long hill where things would string out a bit. Then we would turn back into the wind and things would come back together. Grant tried a breakaway fairly early, but he was pulled back in. For some reason I still don’t quite understand I was having a terrible time with the corners in this race–much worse than Friday. I lost too much speed at every turn and I had to work harder to pull myself back up to the wheel in front of me.
With 1.5 laps to go Grant was isolated at the very front of the field and nobody would go around him, so I shot up the side to set the pace. I was hoping a few people would come around him, but nobody did. So it was just me blocking the wind for him. A half lap later I was done at the front and unfortunately he was back in the lead again. So much for that. I spent the last lap on the back of the lead group, now half the size it was at the start. I had a good finish up the hill, but I started at the very back and still ended at the very back. Grant finished 4th. I finished 17th out of 35 starters.