Two race weekends are in the books.  It feels good to finally to get that first one out of the way.  For some reason it didn't feel like it was my first race of the year though, like it normally does.  Usually the first time I pin it, I'm stuck racing at 80% but it feels like I'm going 110%.  This time for whatever reason, it felt like I was almost 100% already.  I actually had some gas in the tank.  Not sure why, since I'm so far behind in my training schedule because of the whole knee deal, but I'll take it.

That's not to say I won the race, cause I didn't.  The hefty prize list attracted some heavy hitters.  Nick Waite, Rob Marion, and Scott Frederick were the three that made up the lead group with me just a few seconds back. Rode the whole race by myself and came home 4th, doesn't sound impressive, but it's a super good sign for me this early.  Plus those guys live down south and don't have to deal with quite the same weather all winter, so really, I was the first placed yankee.

The second race this last weekend was my first 'drop handlebar' bike race.  I hit up the Philly Phlyer collegiate road races with some of the other guys from the Ship cycling team.  Having never done a single road event in my life, they would only let me race in the B field...

To keep from feeling like a total sandbagger, I figured I needed to work pretty hard for whatever placing I got so I took a shot at a solo breakaway in the 4 lap circuit race, which ended up working.  I went off the on the first climb of the first lap and held a fairly steady gap of 30sec to 1 min to the finish.  Feeling pretty smoked from that effort, I did what I could to repeat in the crit on Sunday.  I got away for 2 or 3 laps towards the beginning but couldn't hold anything, so I resorted to sitting on the front of the group taking pulls that lasted an entire lap.  Made one last solid surge to the front at the start of the last lap, and held the lead through the last corner to take second in the sprint.

And thats all I got.