Coming off a very solid showing at Poor College Kids road race the day before, the team (Chris, Rob, Alex, Jason, and myself) cruised up to Isla Vista to race the Mothballs crit. Basically a pancake flat, fast, 4 corner crit course in the industrial buildings of Santa Barbara. I decided to ride up the day of the race just to get a little longer warm up in my legs, and Jason drove my car to meet the rest of the guys in Isla Vista. Everyone pinned on their numbers, pumped of their tires, and spun around until the start at 4:00 P.M. The weather turned out to be awesome, and we were all looking forward to the last race of the weekend.
With the ENTIRE Team Type 1 pro team present after their Tour of California training camp, the race got up to speed pretty quick. There were a few small initial breaks that were brought back quick. All of us tried our chances at a break, but on this course its pretty hard to get out of sight. All of us were also pretty anxious to get up to the front at bump elbows with the Type 1 guys, and thats exactly what we did. The pack pretty much stayed together for the entire duration of the 75 minute crit.
The goal for the race was pretty simple. We were to stay at the front, get into strong breaks, and drop our fast man Alex off into the Type 1 lead out train for the final sprint. With about 4 laps to go I encountered some trouble when someone in front of me knocked over a giant traffic cone right into my front wheel. This was right when the pack was really rolling and I ended up losing my spot in the front end of the group, but somehow I was able to make it back up with about 1 1/2 to go. While this was happening to me Chris, Jason, and Rob were able to drop Alex off right into the lead out.
Coming into the final turn Alex sat 5th wheel and was able to taste a top 5 finish in a Pro 1/2 crit. Unfortunately the guy right in front of Alex opened up a wheel and when you're in a lead out traveling at nearly 40 mph its nearly impossible to close a gap within 200 meters. He was pretty bummed, but it taught the rest of the guys some lessons, and it proved to us we are going to have an awesome season.
Next up is Boulevard road race and the Red Trolley crit in San Diego.
Corey "Ferret" Farrell
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