Melon Snake Critters

Well, nothing too noteworthy happened at the 2012 Snake Alley Criterium or Melon City Criterium Master's events that I entered.  I bit anti-climactic as I figured I could finally get an award envelope at one of these events.  Nope.

At Snake Alley, a guy in a blood-orange jersey with goofy socks jumped from the gun and screwed up my game plan.  We were strung out from the get-go.  I didn't attack, or get attacked, just dealt with the course and ended up in 9th place.  I can't tell if this is good, because the Memorial Day Weekend fields are full of regional riders I don't know.  Probably it is good, but needed 7th to get an envelope. Dang.

At Melon City I was astonished by how fast the race went by.  I think it only takes about 35 minutes.  It is almost literally 'over before you know it'.   I can't actually complain, because I could have entered the Pro/1/2 event if I was hell bent on racing for a bit longer.  That event is a bit over my head, however... over 140 guys entered that thing, with half of them dropping out.  A Cat 2 rider didn't even make the top 30...  I am pretty certain a Cat 2 race division has got to be in the works one of these years... especially at Snake Alley.... if that happens, I will race my Category, if it doesn't I will race master's and be glad to double up once I turn 40, as I think I needed a do-over in Muscatine.

So,  Zealous Racing had several guys and they took turns off of the front.  At some point, a small split occurred that had some promise and really put me on the edge for a few minutes, but it didn't work out to shed many riders.  I was mostly where I wanted to be during this race.  By the time I had a chance to think about making a move, the race was winding down.  It was going to come down to a field sprint.  I got swarmed going down the hill for the last lap.  As I unleashed a pretty nice sprint up the hill, all hell was breaking lose.  It felt like I was storming the beach during a world war, as guys were blowing up/crashing left and right (again, literally left and right of me).   I was ziz-zagging all over the place.  I successfully navigated my way through the carnage to the 12th spot.  Dang, no envelope on Sunday either. 

Disappointing that the race came down to positioning, but things could have easily worked out for me, had I been just a little further up going over the speed bump.  I guess I wasn't anticipating so much chaos up the hill.  "Better luck next year".