Tour De Health Criterium

With Mobile hosting the State Criterium Championships, VeloCity brought a full complement of athletes to the Infirmary Tour De Health. In fact, we had a representative in EVERY race over the course of the day. The crit was a basic 4 corner lap, mostly flat with a slight uphill drag up to the start/finish line.

The juniors kicked things off first with Charlie Snead racing for us. Charlie smartly capitalized on the smaller field size, rode hard & came away with the gold medal & state championship for his efforts. A great start & it would be a sign of things to come throughout the day for the team.

Beth Hollingsworth raced in the Women's Cat. 4's field. Beth has been coming on by leaps & bounds this year and its showing in her results. Befitting her talents, Beth nabbed a mid-race prime with a well timed sprint & uncorked another solid sprint finish to take the silver medal. Two for two!

In the Men's Cat. 4's, Tim Haskew, Todd Hollingsworth, Frank Martin & Skip Snead toed the start line. With the temperature & humidity now well into the 90's, each event was quickly becoming a race of attrition. The guys rode smartly, working together, with Frank doing some monster turns on the front towards the end. Todd was able to save some precious energy as a result and unleashed an impressive sprint to take the bronze. Frank finished 4th, with Tim in 8th & Skip in 10th. Super team work all around! Three for three!!

Beth, Frank & Tim were still feeling fresh enough that they also raced the Women's Cat. 1, 2, 3 & Master's Category, respectively. They were rewarded for their efforts as they all finished in the money and Beth also won some killer looking shades with another mid-race prime sprint.

Myself & Preston Beasley were last up for the day in the Elite Men's race. A first lap crash split the field & that ultimately shaped the race. As the laps and the heat took its toll, racers were spread around the course either on their own or in small groups. Preston managed to nab a mid-race prime in his group and finished strongly, netting him the gold medal for the Cat. 3's. I followed Preston home for the silver medal.

The team performed beautifully today with many bringing home some hardware. For myself , Preston & Frank this was Day 1, however. The next day would bring the Aflac Games Road Race in Phenix City, AL and we still had a long drive ahead of us...