Tour of Kensington Crit Recap

Going into the Juniors' race, Alexey and I had one objective; Not to go too hard in the beginning so younger guys could ride with us. It was Jakob Kiel-Locey's first race. Jakob is 11 and rides for our junior team. He came to our team last year, and didn't have a trainer, so he lost a lot of fitness that he had last year.
At the start line, the yellow (leader's) jerseys were awarded. Chris Brinkman and my teammate Alexey put on the first Mallot Jaunes of the Tour of Kensington Stage Race, ever.
The 10-14 age category was all AAVC, so there wasn't much pressure. We started off, riding like a team, in a straight paceline. At the end of the first lap, Rem (when he got to the front) accelerated and Pieter followed him, dropping Jakob.
"Okay, forget that whole plan" Alexey and I were thinking. The next casualty was Pieter, who slowly faded off the back. It was just me, Alexey and Rem. We had Rem just stay at the back and just let Alexey and I do the pulling. Well, that didn't work either, and with 2 laps to, It was Alexey and I. Coming around the final turn to the finsh, I was on Alexey's wheel. I foolishly tried to Accelerate by Alexey on the outside of the turn. What I ended up with was me basicly spinning out (I had to block out two gears to make rollout) without being on Alexey's wheel. In short, I didn't win. That probobaly wouldn't of mattered, once Alexey gets started in a sprint, it's hard to stay with him, he has such a quick acceleration.
In the 15-18s, you have one guess who won. It was...not my dad. Chris Brinkman won in style, by at least 20 seconds.
Steve McGregor won the Masters' 35+ on a heroic breakaway, making fools of the peloton.

Frodo Baggins, I mean Graham Howard took the Mens' 1/2 by a few seconds, taking the lead in the General Classification.
Cat 5s involved an EPIC crash, involving the U35 leader, and an EPIC crash avoidal by Mike Birmann, who was right behind the crash, which happened in the field sprint.
Cat 4 men also had an EPIC crash, involving eighth place Zach Maino (I said it once, and I'll say it twice, HE'S ON AAVC FOR THE LOVE OF PIZZA, don't ask me again).
Eric Hinderager lost the lead by a close margin, and David Morissey lost a few seconds.
After that, it was a Catastrophe. Due to the crash, ambulances and whatnot came and needed to fix everyone up (aka, road rash, band-aids, missing limbs, stubbed toes), and that took around half an hour. Tony Wieczorek, who was in two really bad crashes a few weeks ago continued with the Cat 3s.
As for dad and his team, their goal was to set Joey up for the sprint. To put it nicely, THEY DIDN'T DO THEIR JOB! Joey took third, but his stint in the Mallot Jaune was over.

Stay tuned for the next installment of The Tour of Kensington Valley Stage Race.

Communicating with my teamates (either that or I'm a mental)








Pictures by Doug Gatto