Uptown Greenville Crit

What a weekend to start off the first and second race of my season! Greenville is the city of the pirates! ARG! The East Carolina University Pirates, and there is never a dull moment when I visit that amazing place. This year my friend Matt traveled up with me to cheer me on and we both stayed at my friend Mary's house. when we arrived at Mary's, some of her friends were already drunk and this was around noon. Ha, thats college at ECU for ya. Her friend Gabe was stoked about a bike race and wanted to go cheer me on, and that he did. he showed up with an entourage of friends and every lap the field passed, he yelled at the top of his lungs, "Steven is number one!!." he even took the extra step and made a sign in which the photographer at the race took a picture of them and put it up on the website. At the end of the race, i went over to all of my drunk friends/fans and I had seen little cups laying all around them. oh wonderful, they even brought jello shots to the race. lovely! the race went alright for me, there was a break-a-way that was caught with 2 laps to go and I gave everyone the jump start to catch them, as Bender said. I never got the official results so I don't know my exact placing, but it was somewhere around 15th. weather was rainy and there were no crashes, so i'd say it was a good race. I can tell that my performance isn't up to par yet, so here in a month or so when i get a few races in my legs, the manimal shall appear and light up the racing excitement. Right after the Saturday race, we went back to Mary's house and not even 30 minutes later, my #1 fan, Gabe, had puked and passed out on the floor. time check, 4:00pm. 3 hours later, that dude is wide awake and back to being crazy. my hero! ha. the sunday race was, again, cold and nasty weather, but a little more dry. another break-a-way happened and ended up lapping the field. no one wanted to work at all to catch it and I had brought the field so close at times but i gave up on trying and just sat in the field. there was about 6 guys or so in the break-a-way and i got first in the field, so i'm guessing i got around 7-10 place. not exactly sure how many guys were in the break. oh well. I had fun, and I'm just focusing on getting my racing legs back into shape. now that I'll be racing, there will be more blog entries!


Thats everyone, and, of course, Gabe with the sign. From left to right: Josh, Gabe, Claire, Jim, Mary, and Matt.


Gabe, passed out after the race.