This past weekend I did the Tour de Ephrata. The road race was a good course that was technical and windy with a small hill. The first few laps were relaxed. The easiest part of the course was the hill, the flatter more technical sections were difficult in a few places. HPC's team strategy as devised by David and I was to stay near the front and conserve energy, but mark moves by Tony Abate. It was hard to keep positioning with the narrow roads, and, despite following him around constantly, I was out of position when he finally did form a three person attack. Once I pushed my way back to the front I attacked relentlessly for a few miles and tried to bridge across but I was well marked by two District Velocity riders. David attacked on the hill, bringing down the gap again. On the last lap, I had plenty of energy left but was caught out at the back unable to move up. David attacked on the hill again and brought back the breakaway. The field split, or at least the people right in front of me couldn't keep up and they took up the whole road, so I had to wait until they moved out of the way and then I jumped across the gap to stay in contact. Unfortunately there is a long enough and fast enough descent after the climb that David's attack was good for little more than bringing back the breakaway. We were both out of position for the crosswind sprint but pushed our way through to an inconsequential 22nd and 24th.

The time trial was good. I rode hard and thought I had a strong time of 25:15, only 9 seconds behind David on a pretty climby time trial, but it was only good for 22nd place. David rode to 19th and collected our only gc points of the weekend. Shane killed it in the cat 4 race with 25:30 and got 2nd! Jacob also killed it and rode a 25:44 to finish 6th place.

Then we drove to the crit and hung out for what felt like forever before my race at 3:30. Shane was on fire in the cat 4 race taking every preme, and Jacob did well in the field sprint to finish 6th. My crit was disappointing though. I missed Tony Abate's early attack and rode hard near the front, putting in a lot of attacks to try and bridge across since the field was going pretty slow. Then all of a sudden about halfway through the race I came back from an attack and went straight out the back. I thought I had overdone it with the attacking and worn myself out, but once I had exited the course I realized my brake was full on rubbing and probably had been for a few laps. I had perhaps taken to the crit a little too casually and my rear quick release on the wheel wasn't tightened enough and I remember the wheel skipping a few times, which probably either knocked the wheel out of line or hit the brake and twisted it to start rubbing. David was riding strong but didn't get in good positioning towards the end and so there was no result, only fun. I was a little embarrassed to have exited the crit like that, but it was my first crit of the season and I was loving the rush of it while it lasted, because it was a fun and fast course.