I love racing on the East Coast, especially when I get to sleep in my own bed. Although, I have not been sleeping too well this week because I am excited for the big race Sunday. Anyone have any good remedies to help me pass out at night better, let me know. The Hotel Zwizanski opened up this week too. For Philly week my parents put 5 riders in the basement and our mechanic, Jonathon in the guest bedroom and that becomes the team’s home base for the week. Everyone who doesn’t fit there stays in a local hotel in Lionville.
On Tuesday I took some teammates down to the Drives Ride in philly for a little hard riding just to keep the legs opened up. It gave us a perfect preview of all the dangerous manholes along Kelly Drive that we would have to be dealing with on Sunday.
We checked out the Reading course as a team Wed. before the race and felt that we came up with a perfect game plan to win the race. On the final lap the course takes a little detour and goes up an extra 1-mile climb just before the finish. Then it bombs back downhill and its just 2 miles to the finish. So if we could get myself, Jackson and Ben over that climb in the front group, I could deliver them to the sprint where they would crush everyone.
Well ‘race plans’ don’t always work out. We struggled with some bad luck and bad legs and none of us made over the top with the top 20 guys. It was a good race for the first year on the course. The crowds were big considering it was the first year that Reading hosted the race and I look forward to racing it again next year.