Sterling

It was really really cold out today. I went outside for about five minutes to clean out the car a bit in order to make space for Jeremy Powers to ride along with me to the race and my finger tips were completely numb by the time I went back inside. I think the high today was around 37 degrees, in the sun, making me break out the leg warmers to battle the brisk conditions at the Sterling race. Jonny Sundt was there today and was denied a start position at registration because his payment for a fine was yet to be recieved, and that's after he drove up from Virginia. I wasn't sure how my legs were going to react to not riding yesterday, combined with 6 hours of driving the team van up from Pennsylvania but I did my best to get in a good warm-up. My warm-up today was so good that I could actually taste blood in the back of my throat, that was probably caused because of all the cold air. I rolled into the starting grid right behind Tim Johnson and was hoping to stay out of trouble as the race settled out over the first lap or two. I ended up sliding out my fron tire on a little root on an off camber corner during the first lap and watched as a group rode around me and away. With no mechanical issues from the little crash I got riding again but felt a little bit of panic and fatigue starting to settle in as I tried to regain the places that I had lost. There was a really large group behind me but they were unable to latch onto my wheel, and once I got back into a good pace they were out of site for the remainder of the race. A little over half way through the race I caught up to a couple of riders and battled it out with them for most of the remainder of the race. One of the guys crashed himself out of the group and the other guy wouldn't let me escape despite some efforts to ride away from him on the run-up that I could ride, but would then let the pace slow down when he got on the front. Thankfully I managed to narrowly beat him to the line even after leading for most of, if not all of, the last lap. After the sprint for 11th I stopped riding and then had a coughing fit for about five minutes that was probably caused by all of the cold and dry air, it was pretty fun. All in all I think I went as hard as I could today and with that I am happy.