Collegiate Nats

This past weekend i traveled to Lawerence Kansas with for Collegiate Cycling Nationals. The weekend consisted of an 88mile hilly and windy road race on saturday and a 70min crit in downtown lawrence on sunday. The road race started out fairly mild, I watched as Brandon Gavic and Mike Busa went off the front and stayed away for almost 1 of 3 laps. I kept myself at the front and attentive for the breaks to start to go away. I was watching a few key guys that i knew were strong pro riders. I was in a few strong breaks through out the day but ended up missing the key break. Now understand this is a huge field almost 170riders so staying in the top section of the field can be a tough thing to do, i really believe my time in Belgium came into great usefullness to help my large pack riding skills. After the winning break was gone and it was clear we would not be catcing them, i started to position myself for the finish up the climb. As we crossed the dam i started to move slowly on the right side of the road. I wanted to start the climb in the top ten and then follow some strong wheels to the top before setting up a sprint. With about a half mile before the beginning of the climb i was about 15riders from the front when a Penn State and Univ. of Illinois rider locked bars and went down in front of me at over 30mph. I hit them square on and fell hard on my right side. My race was over. I got back on my bike and road to the top with a fair amount of pain in my hand, ribs and shoulder. I started the crit the next day a little sore and stiff, but still ready to race. The race started off pretty fast with some hard attacks from the gun. I followed a move by Hans Arensen of IU and the 2 of us ended up off the front with Hans for over 25min. My mistake was making a move this hard this early in the race. I wasn't quite warmed up and it hurt pretty bad. The anouncer said we were averaging over 30mph laps. After we got caught i settled in near the back to try and recover. Unfortunatly a crash happened in turn 3 in front of me and i ended up chasing and chasing and chasing. With only a few minutes to go and still chasing off the back and feeling like crip i bagged the race. i was pretty disapointed to DNF my first race of the year but you can't always have great days. Next up is Kennsington RR here in michigan.