I love pies. I love bikes. I love criteriums. Apparently, a lot of other people do as well, because that's exactly what this is - and it's been around almost half a century. The 43rd annual Cherry Pie Criterium.
After waking up to a bright screen at 4:30 am and being woken up with a shower -- wait, no -- with an overwhelming amount of dog kisses from Chloe, I hopped off of the couch and threw my stuff in the car. We pulled out of the driveway at just about 5 am and headed up to Napa to race our bikes in frigidly cold California weather. You know, the type that makes your legs and hands all dry. On the way up to the race, we searched for somewhere to eat, and as I read through my Google Maps results one of the locations I saw was IHOP.
"IHOP!?", Michael yelled. "Start up that navigation, we are going there!" And that was that. To make a long story short, Michael devoured a mountain of waffles covered in fake strawberry syrup while I sat there scraping fake cheese off of my omelet with a spoon. Needless to say, I'm definitely going back on my own accord.
Once we arrived at the race, the team and I got in a quick (literally - it would be an exaggeration to say that we got a mile in) warm-up and headed to the line for our first race, the Cat. 4 Elite Men's race. The first few laps were a moderate pace, but after ten minutes or so of going around the track, two dudes flew off the front and went up the road. We did not have any plans for our first race, as it was the second race that we were hoping to do best in. However, that didn't mean we weren't going to try!
I put in some pulls through the backside, technical portion of the course while a couple guys from Mike's Bikes and Terun switched off with me for the straightaway section. Alex Akins, our sprinter, put in a solid attack that drilled the pace for enough time for the pace to become the norm. Soon enough, we were gaining time on the guys up the road. I checked my Garmin - 35 minutes in. It was a 45 minute race, so I realized that if we kept this up we would catch the two up the road in no time.
With the break 5 seconds up the road, one of the two men crashed. It was left to one man versus us and we had ten minutes left (or so I thought!). As we went around the 360 degree round about and headed onto the straightaway portion leading to the finish line, I went to pull in front around the side, and as I did so, the other five dudes in our chase group sprinted full gas.
I hopped on one's wheel, thinking that someone must have attacked hard and that somehow I missed it, but right after we crossed the line, I realized that was the race. It was over. I guess my teenage brain got the best of me and I was so into the race that I hadn't looked at the lap cards in the last ten minutes, only going off of my Garmin for time left in the race. It turns out that I crossed the line for 7th, and that our sprinter Alex won the field sprint with the one guy a mere couple seconds ahead. Get your head in the game, Nathan. You live and you learn.
Our second race of the day, the Junior race, went much better. Knowing the tendencies of junior racing, we decided to race very aggresively and take control of the pace from the start. Channeling my inner XC mountain biker, I attacked off the start and put in a two minute lung opener right off the bat. All three of us sat top 10 the majority of the race, with Cameron and I attacking and counter attacking along with a couple efforts from Alex.
With two laps to go, a Tieni Duro/Hammer rider attacked and Alex followed. They got up the road a few seconds, and with Alex up the road, we sat in and controlled the field. Since Tieni Duro also had a guy up the road and the other minor teams were not making any moves to catch them, we called an unspoken groupetto and had a bit of fun. Here's proof:
Alex did just what we hoped, and won the sprint to take home the win. We got pie and ate pizza. It was successful.
Photography: Gabriel Stewart
