Collegiate Nationals is often placed quite inconveniently relative to University of Minnesota’s Finals week. Last year it was smack dab in the middle of finals, but this year it was only mildly inconvenient, placed after a long and tiring week of final projects and final reviews for classes. But I got through it, and packed up Thursday night. With a relatively rigorous qualification process, there were only 5 of us in the contingent, all some of my best friends.

We had:

• Born Finesser (both on and off the bike) Daniel Svedberg
• Bike Prodigy Colin Catlin
• Crit Monster and super-domestique Logan Grace
• The opportunistic goofball, Chase Wark, who brought along his food baby, Phil D.

We left at around 4:30 AM Friday, electing to skip the Time Trial so that we didn’t have to skip as much class. The drive was uneventful and smooth until Colorado, where we went up through the mountains past Denver through Vail Pass with the high point at over 11,000 feet of elevation. As we started getting up to high elevation, I looked back at Logan, who pretended to gasp for air. We all laughed, but could really feel the altitude, and realized that it could play a big role in the racing.

We arrived at Grand Junction while it was still light out and checked into our days inn. Our bikes were a little gritty, so we showered them off and went to bed.

We woke up and had a good breakfast before heading the 30 minutes to the race course. The profile looked a little more extreme than it ended up being, with a flat crosswind finishing stretch gradually climbing to over 6000 feet, then a long sweeping descent with a switchback climb, back into a crosswind section, coming back around to the climb with a little kicker into the finishing stretch. We raced four laps, for a little over 100k with 6k feet of climbing.

I got a front row callup for winning the conference, which felt good. The pace started off pretty slow, and the high speed descent with over 100 riders was pretty sketchy, but coming around for the crosswind section I positioned myself well towards the front. An attack through the start finish had the field guttered through the crosswinds, and some jockeying and attacking caused a pretty serious selection of around 30 guys. I made the split as we started the descent, but no one was working seriously at the front which allowed a lot of guys to catch back on. The group ballooned to probably over 40 as four attacked: UCLA, two guys from University of Colorado-Denver, and one from Boulder. I thought the move was pretty promising but thought it would still come back, with the pretty big chase group I was in. Only Colin had made the selection, but he lost a contact lens, causing him to crash a little later and he pulled out of the race with 2 to go.

The third lap was hard but uneventful, with UW-Madison’s David Lombardo Chasing for Max Ackermann and a few single riders contributing a little. The crosswind section dropped a few people but I stayed towards the front and had to be aggressive to hold good position. The gap was around 2 minutes coming around for the last lap.

The uphill crosswind section was brutal the last time, with attacks going hard, and everyone guttered. I saw newly crowned Collegiate TT Champion jump hard after a few attacks were reeled in and knew that was the move. CCB Pro Noah Granigan caught his wheel along with me and a guy from the Air Force Academy. I hung on for about a minute, going incredibly deep at the portion of the course at the highest altitude. I made the decision to drop back, hoping that there was a smaller chase group behind I could get into. Max Ackermann jumped past too fast for me to hang on so I got into the next group of 3 riders. We pushed on down the descent but were caught. The group was quite small at this point, with around 20 people, and 2 groups up the road. With Max Ackermann sprung from the group, David Lombardo no longer chased. Fellow Minnesotan Sam Fritz jumped on the descent and I tried to get a chase started, no one wanted to work. Some Colorado Boulder guys swore at and made fun of me for trying to start chasing with some others, which is something I found incredibly unsportsmanlike.

We more or less rolled along until someone jumped from the group in the last 10k. No one chased and we were spread out across the road. A few Ks later  I jumped once and was followed. I jumped again a little before the 5k to go sign and got a gap. I put my head down and powered on. With the last hill approaching I threw both of my water bottles to the side of the road, knowing I’d need everything to hold off the chasers. Up the last kicker, 2k to go I looked back and saw that I had a healthy gap, I thought I could hold it. On the finishing stretch I caught the UCLA guy who had been dropped from the break, but he sprinted past me at the finish. It was awesome coming in that early in the race, ultimately grabbing 10th place. I rolled past the finish and was immediately ran up to by Logan and Chase, who congratulated me and handed me some food and water. They had both DNF’d, with Chase having an asthma attack. Sveddy and Colin DNF’d as well. We went back to the car and grabbed the water bottles I dropped, I ate a bonk breaker and sat in the back seat, incredibly pleased with my result and completely blown out. It was the best result of my life.

We ate dinner and went to bed. The crit was the next morning and we were stoked to race. The plan was to race for Logan, who had a good result last weekend at UW against some of the best crit riders in the nation. We were excited but nervous, and we knew if we played it right we’d have really good chances. The crit course was pan flat, unlike the last few years at collegiate nationals, so we thought it would come down to a bunch sprint.

I got a callup again and the race started furiously. It was 70 minutes plus 3 laps, which is longer than the crits I’ve been used to doing this year. The pace was on from the beginning and I was sitting in pretty good position for the first few laps, but ended up floating to the back. 15 minutes-35 minutes I was much further back than I wanted to be, probably sitting 50 wheels back and suffering.

Hard crits are a bit of  a catch 22. The only thing to do when you’re suffering that will save you is moving up, but it’s simultaneously the hardest thing to do when you’re suffering. I worked up a couple wheels at a time until I was only a couple seconds behind. And life got better. I began to recover and be able to breathe again. I was able to get a drink of my water bottle. Around this time, I saw Logan reenter the field after a crash. He said he was fine but had limited use of his front brake. Chase and Sveddy, victims of the back and the pack were dropped by this point.

I kept trying to move up, even through a few crashes, one which had me chasing onto a pretty significant split in the group. 3 to go I saw Logan, who was surfing wheels in the top 5 drop his chain. Free laps ended at 6 to go so I knew it was game over for him and I was racing myself. Two to go I got in the top 10 and saw that a little break was up the road, and thought about attacking. I hesitated, which was a mistake. Last lap I was sitting in the top 10 but was passed by a few in the sprint, ending up in 18th place.

We rolled to the car and I heard about the various misfortunes of my teammates. Chase had gotten popped early and Sveddy had some respiratory issues. A UW guy had crashed Logan out early, and then he had some other issues including the chain drop.

I ended up 11th in the omnium, which was fantastic for me. I was surprised that the racing didn’t feel horribly difficult-it was hard, but it wasn’t like I was hanging on for dear life the entire time-I feel strong and invigorated more than anything else, and I feel like I have some impressive results. The weekend was a blast, and I was stoked to finish.

Next on the docket is some local racing and maybe the Almanzo 100, a big gravel race. I’m stoked for the summer crit season and nationals round 2 at the end of June.