Back to St. Louis for the Tour De Grove.
Forecasts called for rain all three days. Friday night we got lucky and the rain held off, but it was windy. The Midtown Alley course was a big rectangle of wide open streets, pretty straightforward. Adam, Justin and I were representing St Johns. We all put in little digs here and there, I got in a couple of moves but nothing was getting any leash or sticking at all because of the wind so we sat in for the sprint. I was hoping to lead out Adam in the sprint, but on the last lap things slowed up, I got swarmed and Adam ended up on the front in the wind. In the sprint Adam ended up 11th and I got 5th and Justin finished in the group.
Saturday the rain came and the winds stuck around. We were minus Brian who headed home but added Brian. This course was wet and had some technical corners plus lots of rough pavement and some road obstacles. I went to the front on the first lap and didn't have too much trouble sticking there for most of the race. I heard lots of crashes behind me. There were a lot of guys in the race, 107 according to the officials at the start. So even when I did feel like I was drifting back, I'd check back and see about 40 or 50 guys behind still. Kinda crazy. Anyway, with about 10 minutes left I wasn't paying attention and took a bad line into the 180 corner before the S/F ended up turning on the painted centerline and lost my front wheel, wiping out and breaking my shifter. Dumb. But I didn't get hurt or hurt anyone else so that was good. Thankfully, SRAM Neutral Race Support was on hand to replace my shifter for tomorrow: Another rainy crit.
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