In the photo: Travis Mceuen
Written by Travis
History repeats itself for another hot (+90*) 4th of July race in downtown Davis. I’m always a fan of downtown races, usually a lot of energy from the crowd. The course its self is a “P” shape so not too technical but not as easy as a four-corner crit. We showed up with 3 guys, Jungho, Cam, and myself in a relatively small field of 19. No real team dominance, Penvelo with 3 and Davis with 4. The plan was to race aggressive and try to initiate a break early on.
Lap two I attacked on the finishing straight and formed a gap, by the end of that lap I was joined by a Limitless rider where we shared pulls. I was feeling good and trying to take hard pulls to establish our break but I watched Limitless’ get smaller and smaller. We stayed away for maybe 5 laps and were caught.
The race stayed pretty calm with a few attacks but nothing serious. With about 5 to go Sam from Davis attacked and managed to get some distance. I was reluctant to chase but it was clear that no one else wanted to bring him back. Feeling frustrated and not wanting to race for second place Cam and I took turns for the remaining 4 laps and managed to bring him back right before the finishing straight approaching the final lap.
On the bell lap, I was pretty worked from chasing Sam but I wanted the chance to race for the win so I made sure to stay up at the front. Right before the first turn, I watched the Davis boys start to line up their lead out train of 3 on the left-hand side and I knew those were the wheels to follow. I was directly on their sprinter's wheel as they started to peel off their leadouts. Going into the second to last turn their sprinter jumped; I hung on and was nicely escorted to the final corner which is roughly 100m to the line. I launched out of the corner and stuck it!
2 years ago this was my first top ten as a Cat 4 and I was so stoked for that result. It's cool to look back on the progress and I hope to just keep learning and growing in the sport.
Shout out to Capo for an awesome speed suit, I love that thing. And Gu for keeping me hydrated on another hot summer race.
