It was a nice sunny day in Madison as I toed the start line of the Master Cat 3 race. This was my first time competing in a criterium where I actually had teammates to consider; I'm riding for Team Extreme when competing in criteriums or road races in 2010. They have a large group of great guys racing both the Cat 3's, and Master Cat 3's. Looking around I found John Timm, Rick Amen, Grant Stevens, Jeff Gantz, and a few other teammates. Also a few other past and present coaching clients. So we all rolled away from the start with me being pretty cautious for a few laps. The group was riding predictably overall. Just a few laps into the race one rider launched hard around the group with no real response coming from the front. It was early to take a flier so that guy was given a long leash; hindsight would see that it was too long. I decided it was time to ride closer to the front to stay out of trouble, and react to any additional/significant attacks. Grant jumped around at about the halfway point of the race, and I tagged on for an attempted break/chase. We were joined about 1 lap later by Greg Ferguson (Team Fisher Midwestern). With 3 pretty strong riders, I though we could make something stick. Guess the pack thought that also as they chased in earnest. We gave that move up about 2 laps later. Fast forward to the last lap. I jumped up to about 7th with 1 lap to go. Coming into the last turn I worked hard to grab the wheels of my new teammates that were riding 1st (Grant) and 2nd (Rick). Grant pulled us to about 100 m to go, moved out of the way, Rick jumping for the sprint with me near his rear wheel. Uncertain of constituted proper "teamwork" here, I decided to go for the win (which was really for 2nd since the flier had led the entire race by 45 seconds). Rick and I crossed the line sprinting hard with me in front by about a wheel. Awesome teamwork resulting in 2nd & 3rd place!

The next race was Cat 3's. I tried to repay the favor by working for Jeramey and Travis. I went for every attack, sat on, and repetitively helped to have the race come back together. The last lap was another hard ride at the front but my legs gave up the race with the finish straight in sight. Not quit the leadout I was hoping. Good news in that Jeramey finished 5th, and Travis was 9th. That race was about 20 watts higher for normalized power than race #1 where I finished 2nd. The experience was complete in that I learned to ride for others after taking advantage of a gift in the first race. Pretty awesome experience!