Bank Of America: Charlotte,NC

We normally fly in the day before this race and meet up with the 24hrs of Booty ride organizers for a few drinks and nibbles. The 24hrs of Booty ride raises money for cancer. In its first year it was 1 guy who raised about 5g on his own that year. 4yrs down the track he has about 1000 riders doing it and raised over 450gUS. Its for a great cause so I never mind turning up and talking a bit of shop to some old fullas about bikes and spandex.

We bought our 'A' squad for this crit as 1st place across the line would be presented with a lovely little check of 25gUS. As you can well imagine I was more than happy to try and take it off there hands.

The race was going pretty stock standard as far as Crits in the US go. Toyota United and HealthNet were more than happy for things to come to a bunch kick because we are both confident in being able to win the race that way. The other teams...Kodak, Navigators etc were trying to get guys in moves to take pressure off there sprinters and put more on us. A break did finally noodle off the front and got a good advantage over the field. At one stage they had about 45sec on us. With about 15laps to go Healthnet took control of the front and started eating into the lead of the 3 riders off the front. After about 6 laps of chasing we had the gap to 10sec...No worries...So we thought! That's when the shit hit the fan. The rain came pouring down. We had 7 guys lined up to get me to the finish straight for the sprint. We all went around corner one....The boof! All 5 down except for me and one other.
Because of the free lap rule (which ends at 5 to go) they all got back in. By this time the break had snuck out again to about 15-20sec. Unfortunately at 4 to go Karl and I crashed. Bugger...No free lap. So what looked like a dash for the cash in the final 300m became a victory to an opportunist break that managed to stay away because of the mayhem happening behind. Hats off to the boys on the win though...having the courage to give a break a go on the fast course.
We were pretty upset with how things turned out obviously but Oh well...What are you gonna do...Things could be worse. You could wake up naked in a hospital the next morning, missing your clothes and not remember any details of how you got there...Aye Karl!