Tour of Lawrence Downtown Crit.

I raced the Sunday crit at the Tour of Lawrence. 

I tried hard not to get dropped. I failed. It was a valiant effort. 

The road bike got some much needed love, including faster baby approved tires, the morning of the race and then the entire family unit saddled up for the drive to Lawrence. 

Serious traffic delayed us about 30 minutes and since I still had to register I knew warm up time would be limited. That did not, however, prevent me from stopping by the Bourgeois Pig. I absolutely love that place. 

Managed to warm up for maybe 20 min before lining up. Not ideal but I was so glad to be at a big race with the family watching that i didn't really care. 

Once the whistle blew all the old feelings came back. This was a real race, where you had to pay close attention. I was on extra high, I'm a new dad and I don't want to break my collar bone again because that would suck, alert mode.

I felt like a Jedi. Scanning everyone around me, anticipating what action would lead to a chain reaction that would lead to me crashing. It was both annoying and invigorating.  

That attitude might have affected my race a bit, perhaps making it harder by not takin a small risks that could lead to an easier to finish race, but I was probably bound to get dropped either way. 

This time I held on to the group for 15 minutes, and I kept going after getting dropped. Latched on to one or two stragglers but dropped off them before finally recovering and settling into a rhythm. I noticed a previously dropped group of 5 coming up behind so jumped in with them and then waited to get lapped. 

I / we probably did 4 laps before getting lapped. I jumped back in with the peloton with about 9 to go and had no trouble hanging in until 1 to go. Then I got dropped and coasted home with a smile on my face, glad to get (basically) a full race in. 

For those 15 minutes I was back. 

It was awesome.