Gateway Cup
Tour de Lafayette Square
P/1/2
St. Loius, MO
8/31/2007

Joseph LaFico

If you ever get a chance to make it to the GateWay City I highly recommend it. St. Louis so far has been a great town. The fact that my Dad hooked us up with a free room at the Hyatt Regency makes everything that much sweeter. Now when I say room, I mean a suite that is literally bigger than the house I live in! Beautiful Hotel and it's location is choice as it's right in the middle of all the race courses...so no need for a car. I'm here with Wenger and Wickoff from Healthcoach.

Race starts at 9:30 PM and the pack is huge. probably about 120-140 guys. I get a front row starting position! Gun goes off and we are flying. The race pace was a 28.4mph blazing speed for the night. The first 45mins I rolled in the first 20 guys no problem then i started noticing that I was working pretty hard for that position and then eased up and tailguned the race for the 25minns. I recovered nicely and then made my move to the front with about 8 laps to go. The course was very wide open square so it took about half a lap to move up if you really put forth the effort.

Folks started to get pretty twitchy in the last laps so at the 4th turn with 4 laps to go I rolled straight to the front so i could be in position to respond to attacks. The pack swamped a couple times and with 1 lap to go I was in about 20th position, which I was ok with. That is until the first turn in the final lap with I got bumped pretty hard and some folks wrecked right infront and beside me. I was pretty pissed and used that aggression to drill it to get back on to the 20 or so guys infront of me. I made the connection as I'm sure most of the field had to stop behind the carnage (I guess I was fortunate to at least be so close that I made it around the crash). Going into the final stretch I chilled as there were about 20 guys sprinting it out and I knew there was no chance to placing.

Considering all that took place with it being a very fast race and the amount of people in the race I'm very pleased with the effort and ready for tonight. I'm especially glad that i stayed upright.