Tour of Kansas City, Day 3

Today was the final day of the Tour of Kansas City and the Mercy crew was sitting in pretty good shape for the overall. The way it shook out was that Shadd was leading and only 4 other riders were close enough in points to catch him. As a team we needed to focus on those 4 riders, keep the group together, and make sure that if it came down to a field sprint Shadd had to finish 5th or better. It would be a bonus if we could get one of our guys away in a small group of riders to suck up all the omnium points. Of course it goes without saying we wanted to win the race as well. So how did it play out.........

The race started out with an attack right off the line and then they just kept coming. About the 5th attack Bama started chasing a solo riders attack when I told him to let it go. From behind I heard Steve (Tradewind) make a comment and then 2 turns later he attacked. Austin was on his wheel right away and Kent (Colavita) made it to the group and they were off and running. Pretty much perfect for us, 3 guys up the road that were low in the overall and now it was time to keep the group together. The team did a great job and with 5 to go we got on the front and started ramping up the pace. Unfortunately the heat got to me and I started to cramp badly with a few laps to go. In the end Austin got the win for Mercy and in the field sprint Shadd just got nipped at the line to end up 5th.

For the weekend we ended up winning all 3 stages and finished with Shadd in 1st overall, Austin 2nd overall, and Adam in a 3 way tie for 3rd (6th after the tiebreaker). Huge effort from the team this weekend paid off with great results. Next weekend is the Tour of Lawrence where the competition and courses are going to be much tougher so we are going to have our work cut out for us.

This is pretty much how most of us spent the race today. Time to rest up for next week.