Well, well well, let me just say my girl put on a fierce sprint last night. I'm not taking credit for gusto, but woow, I was impressed. The Giro the Burnaby is a 1.85 km circuit with two short four corner boxes at each end separated by a long slight uphill, slight downhill long straightway.
This course was blazing fast! I think the women's race avg'd almost 41km an hour. The men's was 47km/hr. I even thought to myself, holly shoot this is by far fastest crit I've ever done, I've never spent that much time in the 53-11.
So I really wanted Tash to go out there and go for it. I was trying to pump her up and I think she almost punched me in the mouth before the race cause my "motivational words" were really getting on her nerves. As only a few days ago she could not even get off the Couch from the Gastro, she wanted me to cut her some slack, but I pressed her told her to race it like a cross race, go from the start get her butt in front and "give them nothing and take from them everything". Well she did a great job and full out sprinted for 7th place in a field sprint at almost 60km/hr. To tell you the truth I'm pretty hard on her as I know how hard she works, trains and how good she really is. My jaw actually dropped yesterday as she really really really impressed me. For one girl with no teammates to mix it it up like that, it was a fantastic ride, result and I think a glimpse of what is to come.
I thought, finally she is riding to her potential.
I was pretty inspired by this and really wanted to have a good ride. I positioned myself on the front row about 20 minutes before the start to not take anything for granted. Andrew (Pinfold) and I were chatting before the race and he told me it was more like a Karmess then a crit, so I made sure to race it like this. I managed to stay safe, got to the front for a while, tried to get in a couple moves. I was working my way up to the front for the sprint and I got squeezed over far left in a corner, before I knew it I was on the wrong side of the cones, and there was a fence coming right at me, I could either jump back and risk taking out half the field in the corner or swerve left onto the opposite side. So as much as I am into risk and reward folded the cards and veered off course as it just did not seem logical to take such a risk. To tell you the truth, the crits are great , but really the focus , as always is on the Road race for me. Plus I think I would have looked like a jerk for taking a risk such as this as it was partially my fault for trying to pass too many guys through the corner. As always though, no regrets as I was going for it and you have to take certain risks to have your position, but you also have to know the limits and responsibility to not ride like a hack.
Anyways I'm so pumped to see Tash coming out of her shell and really mixing it up and being "in the mix".
DSJ
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