Inaugural Southside Sprint

One day while my lovely wife and I were out and actually able to enjoy a breakfast in peace together at the local Turtle Bread bakery I caught a glimpse of something awesome, a poster for a criterium bike race that was going to happen right in our neighborhood! I was stoked, I took down the info and hoped for the best in terms of my schedule. I had in the back of my mind that the race was frightfully close to when we were expecting our new baby to make an appearance.
Well, the day before the race I took a chance and registered for the Cat5/Citizen race. As luck would have it, according to me and very clearly not my wife, the baby was still cool with the womb so I headed to the race. My category was the first race of the day so I had to head out pretty early, I think the gun fired at 8:30 for our 11 lap race of the ~1.0 mile circuit. The course was really fun, going all out in the city on a closed circuit is something you can't do all the time. True to my amateur status, I failed to warm up properly and found myself in a tough place about half way through the second or third lap. The leaders were clearly much more experienced than I, and that fact proved to be true as many of them went on to not only line up but also be competitive in the Cat4 race that followed. At any rate, I had a blast and hobbled away truly winded and humbled. I was definitely not in proper form for a race like that. Nonetheless, I look forward to the next time I can line up for a crit.

As part of the festivities they held a race for the kiddos, check out the pic of my girl in her first bike race!