By Bryan Moritz
4/01/2007

Today was the crit race down in Altoona. Driving down with Schnee, it was raining the whole way so that kind of had us worried, but I was hoping to redeem myself from yesterday's break that failed.

The course was at the State Fairgrounds down in Des Moines. The start/finish line was on a flat spot that wound down a short downhill (that was all headwinds today), turned left up about a .2 mile uphill that had a couple ~8% sections but nothing horrible. The finish had a 200 meter flat section with a tail wind.

Warming up, my quads were definitely feeling it from yesterday's 40 mile break, but the plan was to attack on the uphill and try to establish a break of 10 or less guys.

Right off the start, some guys got on front and were driving the pace fairly well. I was sitting top 5 going down the hill, and Nic from ATLAS was right by me. I talked to him at the start and told him about my plan. At the bottom of the hill, I looked back and the field was starting to string out, so I pulled up on Nic's side and told him, "Let's Go!" So we attacked there and kept the pace driving up the hill.

As we crossed the start/finish line, I looked back and the there was no more "pack"...just a string of racers with many gaps opening up. So we kept the pace going and somewhere got a group of 4 of us...Me, Nic, a Pella Ortho guy, and some random guy in white.

The Pella guy and the White guy didn't want to do much work. The White guy was pretty rude too when we would tell him to pull through. We soon shelled the Ortho guy, and it was the 3 of us that stuck the gap till the end.

The whole race, me and Nic were doing ALL of the work. When one of us would pull off the front, the White guy would sit up and not pull through so that really angered us.

Coming up the hill before the final lap, Nic turned to the other guy and told him that he was to take 3rd because he did not do any work at all during that race. His response was, "But I don't have any teammates"....if he would have looked around he would have noticed that neither did the two of us but we still worked that break. When you get in a break of a few guys like that, you don't just sit in and dog it like that, you work to make sure the break sticks.

So at the top of the hill, the White guy started to fall back and me and Nic picked up the pace one last time to ensure he would not win.

Coming up to the line, Nic let me take the win which was an EXTREMELY generous action on his part!

Oh and get this, afterwards, Nic went out immediately and raced the Master's race. He got into the lead group of 3 there also, and took 3rd overall in the Master's race!!!! That guy is an animal haha

Well now the reality of being a college student is starting to set in...I have to go study biochemistry.