Martinez... the fun stuff

Local photog Mark Adkison has put up photos of the junior race at Martinez. Somehow he always manages to get great shots... be sure to check em out.

So, with the 3's racing immediately before the juniors I didn't have chance to talk tactics with the kidlets before the race. This time I didn't need to. Seems that the kidlets are learning how to read a race all by their lonesome and adjusting tactics to suit the situation...

TK had a little dig on the first lap that didn't really go anywhere, but when the field caught him they sorta sat up. At that point AWfoSho just rolled off the front without much of an effort. Once he realized that the gap was there he hammered it home. TK let the field chase for awhile,and, when the time was right, hit em hard and bridged to AWfoSho. Not sure what the rest of the 17/18 field was thinking at this point, but it seems like they stopped racing. There were a few attempts at bridging by Ride's Bolster and Rocket Sports' Christensen, but the 15/16 kiddos kinda nullified them and nobody was really willing to sell out on the front. So, the lapping happened pretty fast...

Once AWfoSho and TK had put a lap into the field the kidlets didn't ride as I would have expected, but I figured that I'd let 'em race without much direction from the bleachers...

Sound tactics would have been to send Staz or El Gigante up the road and bridge TK or AWfoSho to them once they'd established a gap... the best way to guarantee a 1-2-3 finish... instead the kidlets, under AWfoSho's direction, decided to play for a field sprint.

Gotta admit, it was beautiful seeing TK, AWfoSho, and El Gigante lined up all lead out train like with two to go. It was even more cool that Tieni Duro's Peter Taylor and Joel Shafer of Specialized were the only ones that could stick to the tail end of the train. The kidlets were laying down some serious power.

Alas,El Gigante lost AWfoSho's wheel out of the last corner and the sprint commenced from way out... Both Taylor and Shafer came around El Gigante before the line. Good on 'em. Looks like the kidlets need a little more practice on the lead out thing...