In the photo: Travis Mceuen
written by Travis.
As you may know, it’s been raining... Like a lot and Monday, February 20th was no exception. With a small field of guys dumb enough to show up to race in the rain and me more or less just racing for fun, I wanted to try some things. The field had a lot of juniors so I knew if any of them wanted to try and break I would go with them. The course itself is pretty technical with two 180 degree turns and an off camber round about.
With the weather conditions (pouring rain and strong winds) everyone was being timid on the corners. After lap one I started riding really aggressively and attacking right before the corners. Every time I attacked I would get a gap. My hope was that someone would catch on and go with me; that, unfortunately, did not happen. Almost every lap I tried this hoping the field would let me go and I could try and go alone but no luck. I started to realize it was going to come down to a bunch sprint. The combination of juniors, rain and a bunch sprint is a scary thought. My plan was on the last lap I would attack, like I had been doing, right before the first corner and just give it a Hail Mary to the end.
Apparently, someone had the same plan and attacked right before I did, I was second wheel going into the technical section and held his wheel through the roundabout. He started to give it some juice out of the roundabout but I could see he was going to pop. I went around him and had pulled a junior with me, we had a small gap on the field. I didn’t want to just lead this kid out for him to win so I let off the gas a little bit knowing I could out sprint him if we were side by side. When I let off he started to go and there it was, him and I side by side for about 250m and I was right, taking him at the line.
I really feel that the confidence I had under these wet conditions came from my Specialized Turbo tires, I never once doubted my cornering with those bad boys. Unfortunately with the weather people did not stay around for a podium picture but I was able to round up one other guy after all this was TMBDev’s first win of the season and we had to capture it!
