Merced Weekend Wrap-up

Wrapped up the Merced Marathon! Went full bore non-stop since checkin' out of work on Friday evening and making it as far north as Visalia, CA before calling it a night at around 11pm.

Made it up to Merced with plenty of time to do the Crit (SRM screenshot) on Saturday:

Stayed out of the wind and rode very conservative - didn't quite know what to expect from the scene up here in Merced. Basically, I was trying to erase from my memory the last time I raced up here as a cat 2 in the Pro 1,2 race about 10-12 years ago -got totally shelled during this crit and to follow it up, during the RR the following day (IIRC), I drilled a pothole and snakebit the rear clincher Michelin SuperComp HD TIRE! on my Specialized Tri-Spoke. Well, at least I managed to stay well within myself during the 35+ race this time around! :-)

As the screenshot indicates - I kept things under control and went a wee-bit harder near the end - wound up top 25 by the official results:

http://www.mercocyclingclassic.com/grandprix_results/

First half of the race was pretty cool, in that I got a chance to say hi to a couple of old friends and an acquitance from the wind tunnel! After the race it was pretty cool to put a face to a name (bpeterson) from the BTR forum as well!

The RR Sunday was interesting. Same rough pavement sections I remember from the last time I was here (but not sure if it was the same exact roads - for some reason I remember going the opposite direction in the mid 90's??). Again, I raced real conservative, never touching the wind, though, the way the race played out I think that was the right thing to do - pretty fast, and I never saw a threatening break that had both the Safeway and the AMD boyz represented.

Put myself in a pretty good spot making the second to last left hand turn ~8-10k from the finish and was probably 20th dood or so going into the last kilometer. More than likely wound up in the 15-20 spot in the final sprint (despite overhauling a women's race that was simultaneously finishing!) - a wee-bit sketchy final few kilometers as we were weavin' in and out of the remnants of that field.

Here's the screenshot of that pretty good "fill the right" RR effort:

After the race, we packed up real quick and headed over to the coast - yep, we took the scenic route home. It was a pretty long drive, but man, that section of road between Monterey and San Simeon is just about the best scenery in the world. Good stuff!

Here's a shot off of the Cabrillo Hwy (route 1) a wee-bit before sunset:

and a sweet shot of me and the Mrs. just north of Big Sur!

All in all, a great weekend to put in the supercomputer!