Jimmy Candelaria kicked off his 2011 season and his road racing career this last weekend at the Cherry Pie Road race.
Jimmy is a huge cyclocross racer and gets in some good MTB short track racing as well, but this season he decided to take it up a notch and add road racing to his quiver of tricks.
Also representing was Kevin Drake, a vetran of the team and a seasoned Cat 3 road racer in his own right. Kevin was there to coach Jimmy on his maiden voyage and to add some team support to the venture.
So how'd it go? It went awesome of course! Jimmy started nervous but found his legs and held on strong as the pace ramped up throughout the race and riders dropped off in droves. During one particularly intense effort, Jimmy put his head down and dug deep... so deep in fact that he didn't see a hard left 90 degree turn. He sailed off the road and into the ditch. Whoops. While bent bars and deformed levers might stop some, Jimmy got right back on and kept chasing all the way to the finish.
Jimmy, you are our man of the hour! Way to start strong, dig deep, and recover from calamity.
Here he is sailing across the finish in fine fashion! Check out this picture below where he has a huge chunk of mud in his helmet from where he went down. That must have been an epic impact!
Up next for Close 2 My Art is the Banana Belt road race series. We expect to launch a strong field of 3s and masters into the mix. Stay tuned and train hard!
