In the photo: Sam Hill
Report written by Sam.
Coming off of Dunnigan Hills Road Race I was extremely motivated to capture some of the last few upgrade points I needed. Teammate, Travis, decided to come race last minute and proved to be a great help for me in this race. Suisun is a four corner criterium, so it definitely suited me, no place to slow down.
Around 9 a.m., when our race started, there was absolutely no wind, so it was really easy to move around in the field, until it got heated up later. I tried to stay around in the top 5 in the early going because I had felt that it was easier to be up near the front.
It was actually pretty aggressive at the head of the race for the first half. Many attempted to go solo or go as a group, but nothing would stick. This is where Travis was really helpful because sometimes I would take a back seat and he would chase all of the attacks just to sit on their wheel or attack the field with the intention of wearing out the aggressive riders.
About 20 to go, a rider went off of the front and had a pretty strong 10 second gap that was holding for a few laps. I decided to just go for it as I felt like it looked promising, if I was able to bridge. So, on the front straight, I attacked to bridge up, and another rider worked with me to get up to the solo rider. We caught him on the back straight extremely quickly and started rotating. Another lap and a half later, a Sunpower rider had managed to bring the field back to us.
At this point, I sat 15th wheel or so until it came down until seven to go, where I started to slowly move up. I decided to wait until two to go to go all in and go to the near front. Now, the field was strung out, and I had pretty much secured my spot coming into one to go. I almost got swarmed on my left side on the back straight, but that was short lived. Coming into the last corner I was fifth wheel and Travis was just in front of me for an almost perfect leadout. I was too far back at this point to pass the eventual winner, but I still sprinted to take second. I’ll gladly take a 2nd to pick up some needed upgrade points, and a Velo Promo T-shirt.
In the end, I enjoyed capping off a great weekend, where Travis took 3rd at Dunnigan, and I was able to take 2nd at Suisin. Thank you to my parents and my team for supporting me at this past weekend’s races. Also, thank you to sponsorsMike’s Bikes, Equator Coffees, Sram, Specialized, Violich Farms, Toyota, Osmo, Probar, Smith, Capo, and Bikesmart.
