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Athens Twilight It’s been a very busy week for the boys of Team Myogenesis.com p/b United Healthcare. With the USA Crits Speedweek kicking off in the Teams hometown of Athens, GA we are always very involved, from school visits, to a Team expo booth to support our sponsors, to lots of racing! Our first task was to make a couple of school visits in the Athens area to talk to the kits about bike safety, health, and of course bicycle racing. This years sponsor addition of United Healthcare really coincides well with these types of non-racing efforts. Both school visits went very well and as always the kids loved having us there and had tons of questions. Our next task at hand was to make sure the expo tent was up and running for Saturdays downtown Twilight expo. Throughout the year we pick certain events to do this as it’s a great way to showcase our sponsors products, sample, or distribute information. This year we are incredibly lucky to have the support from Café”ine Café and owner Jason Kriel (and of course his mom, brother, and wife). Jason took our expo tent to a whole new level this year! We had free shots of espresso which was a huge hit. Our expo tent was hands down the best expo of the event. We were able to get tons of great exposure for our sponsors! Of course we came to race too and once again with great success. With a bit of a banged up team we were missing a few key players like Adam and Chris but still had a strong lot for the weekend. Many of us including me (Eric) decided to do the amateur races in the morning to qualify for the amateur finals race which was downtown before the Pro womens and mens race. Cleve qualified by doing the masters race in the morning. In the Pro/1/2 race we had Thad, David, Brady, and I. 59 starters lined up to fight for 35 qualifying positions. My goal was to expend as little energy as possible and merely qualify for the night race. I sat at the back for the first 20 minutes or so but about midway through the race noticed two riders were dangling about 15 seconds in front of us. No one seemed to be interested in chasing and I felt like we should be represented in any break as we had the strongest group there. I jumped across to the break only to realize they were struggling a bit. I thought to myself “this is a big mistake, I’m going to use too much energy”. I decided to ride but not 100%. As we got nearer to the end of the race our gap had gone up significantly but I saw two strong riders trying to bridge up to us so I hit it hard. Several laps later I was sprinting across the line for the win. Thad jumped the group on the last lap for fourth, and Brady and David also qualified for the night race. Kudos to the Team for shutting the race down behind me and not letting the field bring me back! After the race we had a Team photo shoot with local UGA Student Allison Carter, each spent some time in the expo booth and then were off for some rest and recovery. For the finals race we knew we needed to get Thad or myself off the front as a sprint finish would not go in our favor. The race was a short 20 laps so things had to be aggressive from the gun. I found myself in an early break that stayed away for a few laps before coming back together, Thad then attacked and found himself in a group that also contained Cleve. I thought this break was going to stick but it came back too, Thad went again with one rider but that too was brought back. Only 8 laps had gone by but it seemed like a lot longer. A rider attacked and I followed. I was definitely feeling the effects of the hard effort earlier in the day and the first break of this race but our gap opened quickly and I knew this could be a repeat of last year. We worked evenly around the course and the constant cheers and hearing my name helped me ride through what was becoming more and more painful of a ride. I felt like at any moment my legs might completely stop working but the energy from the 10’s of thousands of fans can motivate you like nothing else. With one lap to go I knew I had another Twilight win under my belt barring a crash or mishap. As we rounded the last corner I waited until about 150 meters to go before sprinting to victory. Once again a huge thanks to my teammates who controlled the field perfectly! Now the big show was on! For this we had Ryan, Nick, Sandy, Oneal, and I was planning on starting so that I could get start points for the rest of the Speedweek Series overall points. My plan was to do a few laps then pull out but once the race started I felt great and decided to stay in as long as I could for training. Unfortunately I had been told to wait for a podium after the finals race and sat around for nearly 2 hours without any food or drink for recovery and my energy levels got me through ¾’s of the race before going cross eyed. The race was very fast as usual and starting in the back I could never even really tell what was going on in the front. I do know that Ryan rode like a champ staying in the top 20 throughout the race and was very active.
Being the first race of this caliber for the Team none of us are really used to this level of racing as we are racing against guys that have been doing the biggest races in the country. Ryan, Oneal, and Nick managed to stay in and finish but no big results.
So the start to the Crit Series was very successful as we not only got some wins but reached out for our greater cause of promoting the sport and our sponsors.
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