The Tour of San Fernando kicked off with a nighttime crit, for which they shut down a section of divided highway and ran a banana shaped 1.2 mile course. It was quite a scene, as everything seems to be here, with people crowding the start finish and people blaring on and on over the loudspeaker. With a u-turn at each end of the course and long straights it was basically slam the brakes, sprint out of the turns and then jam it at high speeds until we were braking at the other end. We're only 3 guys against teams of ten or more, so we just wanted to sit pretty, stay fresh and snag an opportunity to get Erik some extra time by sticking him in a break.
Things were going pretty well until Daniele broke his chain. Bummer! He managed to grab a bike from a guy we knew from Port of Spain and then jump back in. Unfortunately big Mike apparently has gorilla feet and Daniele was flopping around in those shoes like a dick in a shirtsleeve. He still managed ride like a frigging animal. With a few laps to go Erik managed to slot himself into a good looking break with another gc conteder and the CRUSHED IT. These guys would have stayed away and nabbed a gap on the field, but for some crazy reason they announced primes with 3 AND 2 laps to go. Ridiculous! We wneded up catching them with a few hundred meters to go and Erick held on for 8th.
Meanwhile I was trying to set up for the field sprint. Coming into the last u-turn Trek had a big train lined up and Daniele and I were next to each other behind the trek guy who had won the one lap sprint at Newsday. I asked him if he wanted the wheel (he's a great track rider) not realizing he was on a borrowed bike. The guy heard us say that and instead of ripping through the turn and giving us a ride to the sprint he took the worst line possible, coming to an almost complete stop and letting a gap open to the rest of the train. I'm an idiot, and instead of just taking the wide line and blazing around him I let him jam me up. He sprinted HARD out of the turn, but I stayed with him and tried to go for it from way too far back for way too long, but I managed to pass a number of guys and pip one more at the line to finish 4th.
Pretty sad style, but not a bad finish.
Post-race was a bit of a disaster. The race had been delayed to accommodate riders stuck in traffic due to an accident coming from p of s and a crash in the masters race. The race started more than an hour late and we had a 7 am start time for the hill clim tt the next morning(that's 3am california time). We had to go back to one house to drop our gear and shower and then get a ride to a second house to eat and sleep. We didn't get to bed until well after midnight, and I haven't felt so wrecked in a long, long time...
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