Corey Knowles, Danny Zotter, Owen Wood, and I (Aaron DiNoto) took part in the Chris Thater Memorial Crit this past Sunday. We went to Binghamton with the plan being to get Corey the win and hopefully his Cat 3 upgrade.

Sunday morning it was maybe 60 degrees out when we got up. Had some crappy coffee and some english muffins for breakfast at the Econo Lodge. We got to registration plenty early and were able to warm up and preride the course since we were the first race of the day. The course was as I remembered it. They actually fixed some of the pot holes so and most of the white cross walk paint had warn away so atleast the pavement was safe. Rolled up to the start line in the second row and right next to Danny, Owen and Corey. Had some prerace jitters from not racing a lot recently and the fact that it was such a big race (the coffee might of had something to do with it). The race started out somewhat aggressively with a rider attacking almost from the gun. We did not go extremely hard up the hill pretty much the whole race. I remained near the front and tried to pick out who was sketchy. The list was pretty long but I began to make a point of being in front of certain people heading into the fast corners about 10 laps in (it was a 30 lap 25 mile race). There were a number of primes but they were for Dick's giftcards so not to many people were really going for them. About halfway through the race our pace slowed a little and there was some general bunching in the corners which led to a crash which took down Corey. Danny road up next to me and said Corey's bars were out of wack and we'd have to switch to plan B. Plan B was for me to lead out Danny.

All race I rode conservatively thinking it was going to get harder at some point. It never really did. If someone attacked no one would bridge or follow. If a group got a slight gap they were too disorganized to make it work and someone would drag a fast line of people up to them. Typical cat 4 stuff. With 5 to go a rider attacked on the left before the hill and I moved to the front to set a hard tempo and keep his gap reasonable. We caught him before the start finish and I saw Corey for the first time since the crash. I thought he was out of the race. I quickly found Danny and told him Corey was good to go. With three to go Danny and I moved into the top 10 and tried to stay there. Everyone was getting pretty axious and the corners were getting jammed up. With 2 to go I knew Danny was on my wheel and had no idea where Corey was. I was hoping he was near Danny. We were somewhat stuck in the pack headed down the back hill stretch when I saw an opening to get free right before the high speed corner. I went through it knowing Danny would following and decided to just go then since I had the opening. We quickly went by the front of the pack and had a gap when we hit the last corner. I kept shouting back to Danny do we have Corey while keeping my speed high but not all out. When we were nearing the start/finish line for 1 to go I heard Danny yell something which I took to mean Corey was with us (I later found out that was the case and he yelled "we're in business"). I went as hard as I could into the first corner and all the way to the base of the hill at which point I was blown and Danny took over. There was atleast a couple of bikelengths between Corey and the next riders at that point. Danny drilled it up the hill and buried himself all the way to the last corner. This gave Corey pretty much no one to sprint against as he had multiple bike lengths to start with and finished about five lengths in front of second place. It's pretty nice when things go to plan. Or sort of to plan with some improvising.