I switched to masters 35+ so i could get home a bit sooner. Field of about 50 guys on the line. 7-mile race course has some very narrow roads, massive potholes (luckily all on the climb), and a nice 2 mile climb with nothing steeper than 6% gradient, most was around 3 to 4%.

Naturally I'll attack the heck out of the field on the first lap (learned that one from Dan). Immediately went solo for an entire lap. Did i mention the wind? Gusting to 25 mph.

Field caught me around the start / finish, much smaller than before. By the 5th lap, i was in a break of 7, with three Arts Cyclery guys and one Thurlow Rogers. Thurlow dropped out with a mechanical, and I burned off two of the Arts guys on the climb, leaving only a cramping Craig Nunes behind.

The remaining 3 guys asked me to keep everyone together until the last lap (due primarily to the wind, none of them wanted to be left alone in it). Our gap was at 5 minutes, so no worry of getting caught. Last lap I shed all but one ShoAir/Sonance rider (Jamie Paolinetti) on the climb, and I couldn't quite drop him on the headwind downhill, he fought back easily, or faked it real good. Anyway, we took it to the tailwind false flat uphill sprint, went from about 400m out and we had a total drag race to the line, i got nipped by about a half wheel for second place.

First up, Masters 35+ race. 60 guys on the line. Attacked quite a bit, then decided to let some of the others have a turn at the front. A group of 6 got free about half way thru the 50-minute crit, i bridged across the 15 second gap on the climb and tagged onto the back. Hey some of these guys look familiar, three of the six were in the break with me in the RR yesterday, including Thurlow and Paolinetti. The guys in the break spent most of their time shouting at each other and waving their arms at everyone to come around. Man how much do I hate SoCal racing....

Anyway, we build the gap up to about 45 seconds. Last lap on the downhill im just finishing my turn at the front and getting ready to pull off when Thurlow hits it. The rest just watch him go and wait for me to do something. I could 1) chase and catch him on the climb and get 7th, 2) sit up and race for 2nd, or 3) do nothing and get 7th. I opted for #3 for some reason, and only lit it up about half way up the climb. Frustrated with myself. I should have done #1 just so Thurlow wouldn't win, and my result would still have been the same. There's no use being nice to the guy and giving him a complement, he will still have some asshole comment back to you, as I learned. Never again, old man, not with me anyway.

Next up, the P12 race, which happened to be the 2009 SCNCA crit championship.

Huge field for a 0.6 mile course, over 100 riders. Easy to sit in despite the 25 mph winds, got lose once and bridged up to Vincent Owens and Mike Telega, but we weren't going anywhere, not with Rashaan Bahati and a bunch of hungry SoCal crit riders in the field. Went back to my usual 30th wheel place and finished up the race there. Kept wheels on the ground, that's what was important.

Tony Reid added this:

I did the 45+ race in the AM. Pretty small field of 35 or 40 guys but there was some horsepower there. Amgen had 3 guys including the just crowned 50+ national RR champ and Cynergy had 4 or 5 including David Worthington. Worthington went ballistic as soon as we hit the climb which strung things out. By the top there were 10 of us. No one was willing to drive it (even though 6 of the 10 were Amgen and Cynergy guys) after the descent so another 15 or so got back right after the start/finish. 2nd lap, more of the same except I was #12 over the top about 8 seconds behind the lead group of 11. I chased for the better part of lap but was loosing ground. Two guys caught us and we chased for another lap before getting caught by 2 more. We dropped one which left 4 of us. We had the pack in sight for a couple of laps but somewhere in there Worthington attacked and went away solo and the group was out of site. On the last lap, I attacked on the climb and took one guy with me. We caught a guy who had been dropped out of the lead group as we went over the top so it was 3 of us sprinting for 11th place. I managed to win that for 11th.