Source Endurance

From our friends at hscycles.com

The Memorial Park Wednesday night crit is my cherished mid-week respite from the daily grind of work. It’s always fun no matter who shows up, but even more so when guys from out of town join us to liven things up. Barry Lee and his always formidable TXTough/THSJ guys showed up from Austin to give us flat-landers a run for our money. The race stared fast as always, with Team Bike Barn trading blows with the usual suspects and the new faces in the crowd. Several promising breaks got up the road, but nothing stuck until 25 minutes to go when a large group containing 3 TXTough/THSJ in Andrew Dahlheim, Barry Lee, and Carlos Vargas; 2 Bike Barns with me and Redneck Brent Turner; the always-in-the-mix Greg Bauer; plus a few others strong enough to make the cut including young guns Lawson Craddock and Alan Ting.

We all worked well together with everyone taking even steady pulls, but I knew I had to keep my eye on the TXTOUGH boys…the attacks were inevitable and I knew I had to be ready to jump. Sure enough, with just under a lap to go, Andrew jumped and I immediately latched onto his wheel. I looked back and we were gone…the other guys never responded. Andrew kept rolling hard for a few seconds then flicked for me to come through. Uh oh…now it’s basically my obligation to drag him to the line. He had no reason to work as he could sit on my wheel and get a ride to the line because he’s got 2 relatively fresh teammates only seconds back. I took over the front and tried to balance my efforts between not going too hard and having no sprint versus not going hard enough and getting caught by the now-chasing group. I essentially rode to the line looking backwards at both Andrew and the chase group to see how close they were getting. As we rounded the final corner I knew we wouldn’t get caught and I could now concentrate on my sprint. I had the home course advantage and knew precisely which line to take on the awkward bending sprint finish. I managed to barely hold Andrew off by about ½ a bike length.

Thanks to Greg and Hans for putting on the race…and thanks to Barry and crew for making the trip from Austin.

Kevin Kremke