Stage Two (for me) of the Tour of St. Louis was the Carondolet Park Circuit Race. The course was created by adding an additional 3/4 mile of road to the Tuesday Night World Championship course. It's a course which features swooping curves, almost no corners and one steep descent followed by a quick rise back up. It also featured a swirling wind which bounced through out the park's trees. In fact it was so windy that water from one of the park's fountains traveled over a 100 meters and misted the riders as they went along.
Most of the early part of the race was uneventful. I took a few digs and bridged up to a couple breaks which were ultimately pulled back. The wind knocked a lot of eager breakaway attempts down and the speed of the ascent/descent made it hard to get away unless you were intent on just putting down a nasty tempo until everyone around you abandoned all hope.
Before the race started I was warming up with the boys from the Mercy Cycling Team and talking about how to attack this course. Joe Schmalz made a passing comment that if you took the slightly less than 90 degree corner at the bottom of the fast descent at 40 mph that no one would follow you. With two laps to go I put that theory to the test. Given the grade and the tailwind it wasn't that hard to push the pace up to 40s. I tucked through the corner and out the other side with only one guy on my wheel. I punched it up and over the first part of the hill and the other guy took it from there.
We had a solid gap on the field and it was growing quick. He went down into an aero tuck with his arms on the top of the bars and I put my head down and my hands in the drops and we charged off. I was pretty gassed from the effort going up the hill and had just about caught my breadth when he popped in the head wind. I came around him but a quick gust knocked down the mirth of my jump. At the start/finish line with one to go I got caught by the field.
I thought my day was over but surprisingly the pace really slowed down and I didn't get swarmed. I made a few aggressive moves to put myself back into the top 25% of the field going into the final couple hundred meters. I started my sprint too late for anything grand but ended up in the top 20.
Two top 20 finishes in a weekend is a good result but not something that I'm overly happy with right now. My focus is sharp and my form is on, but I'm not seeing the sprint the way I was a month ago. I made very simple mistakes in both races in the Tour of St. Louis, mistakes that I shouldn't be making at this stage in the season. What it comes down to is that right now I'm missing the sprint before the sprint or that time when you ramp your speed up to get good position to sprint. I've been sitting back for too long waiting to go. I need to remedy this mistake and then just let my sprint flow.
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