Joe Matava Criterium

The second crit in this action-packed week, the Joe Matava crit took place as it always does on July 4th. The weather was a little grey but warm and burned to sunshine in the afternoon. For this race Ingy was the captain and wanted to try a new strategy of having each of us mark a rider in the field - the idea being to pick someone who is usually strong or dangerous and learn from their lines.
My mark for the race was Colin Gibson from Keller-Rohrback - not necessarily the most likely sprinter for the finish, but dangerous if he could get off the front in the right spot and TT to the finish. At Tacoma he led out one of his teammates to get a good finish for their team.

Our race started in early afternoon with nice weather and a field of about 56 riders - big but not that bad on this course due to the nice wide corners. I had a good start off the line and entered the first corner in the top 20 riders. I continued to stay in roughly the same spot until people started to push the pace and we started to file up. As the accelerations began, I made sure to stick with the front group, that way I could be useful to the team even if Colin wasn't in position to cause trouble.

We continued in this fashion for awhile until the pace started to slow and attacks began again. As I continued to push this position, Colin finally came into the front section of the race. I made sure to quickly catch his wheel and stayed behind him for the next few laps as we continued through the pack. A few laps later he made his move and slid up the outside along the front stretch - I was watching and was on his wheel immediately. It was now Colin, an Audi rider, and myself off the front of the field and continued in this manner for the next 2 laps until they realized we didn't have enough of a gap to get clear and slowed to have the group reclaim us. I was definitely happy for the rest after that hard pull, but made sure I stayed toward the front again to avoid getting stuck deeper in the field.
The race continued to pull at a decent pace with some smaller attacks (nothing staying away for more than a corner though) until we hit the last 5 or 6 laps.

At this point HSP organized to push the pace and set things up for the sprint. I was still in good position and worked to keep or advance where I could for the next few laps. Robson, Andrew, and Doug all moved up toward the front with me to get ready for the finish. Robson was trying to set up a lead for Andrew but they were on the wrong side of the group to catch my wheel and Andrew had to move around Robson to go for it on the last lap. As we hit the slight rise on the back side, things were going full-on and as we rounded the corners I pushed as hard as I could to try to move up to the leaders. The final result was 12th place for myself, followed by Doug and Andrew in the next few spots. Not a perfect race, but I felt good with all the accelerations and am definitely getting stronger. Hopefully we can put some of these lessons together for a good team showing at Redmond Derby Days next weekend.