Today was the last day of the Tour of Kansas City and again it was a hard day at the races. A super short course with some hills and high temps made the hour long crit seem even longer. As a team, the Mercy Cycling crew had to figure out how we wanted to race to preserve Shadd's 3rd overall in the omnium race. We came up with a plan on how we wanted to race and the plan pretty much worked out. We even had a bit of a surprise as Jason pulled off a stellar ride for 3rd. Shadd rode the race just like he needed to for 4th and retained his 3rd overall in the omnium. As a team it think we got 3rd, 4th, 7th, and I even squeaked into the money with a 20th. The race today was interesting to me because of all the team tactics that went on in the race. Even though everybody wants to win the race, the overall omnium places are very important to the teams. We new the riders that we had to watch as did all the other teams. It all came down to who could get the right combination of riders up the road, and for us, if it wasn't right it was up to the rest of the team to bring them back. Just goes to show how much of a team sport cycling is.

This is definitely the most pain full part of the P&L crit, a short, steep uphill into the wind.

Found some pictures from Cliff Drive and you can see how hot is was, quite a few people have their jerseys unzipped. We were lucky to have quite a few people giving us water bottle hand ups, thanks guys!

I think that watch says 10:20, yea that's hot! 99 degrees that early in the morning and we races at 2:30pm.

I found this video of Friday nights Longview Crit, tough race but probably one of my better ones this year.

Overall I'm pretty happy with my weekend. It's been a long time since I've done Pro 1-2 races but so far it's been good. I've gone from hoping to finish the races to actually playing a part in the races. This weekend was a tough one with the heat and 3 days of racing, I'm really tired right now but after a rest I should come back stronger. Next week is the Tour of Lawrence and right now I'm not sure what race I'll be able to do. After a little medical scare this week I found out that I'm not following in Lance's footsteps and some meds should take care of things. Have to see what the meds do to my recovery before I sign up for the races.

Gotta go, time for pizza!