Spencer Bushnell won the cat3 Crawfish Criterium and Tim Jones won the cat3 State Criterium Championships this weekend!

Monica Freeman won the cat4 Crawfish Crit on Saturday and finished 3rd at the women’s cat4 State Race. She’s been working on her upgrade to a cat3 for a while now and she attributes her success in criteriums to riding on the tandem with her husband, Mike, “because it’s more aggressive and really helps with cornering.”

Tim Jones and Monica Freeman on the boxes

With 7 riders in the cat3 State Crit race we tried some different tactics because the race was rather eventful with tires blowing up, several crashes and we knew we had the strongest team in there. Spencer and I sat at front for most of the race and Scott Gray threw in some good attacks with 6 and 5 to go. I was tangled in a crash and someone knocked my rear wheel of out the dropouts with 5 to go so I was able to get in after a free lap. I attacked with 2 to go and made everyone chase me down. Tim Jones sat in the chase group and as they caught me with 1/4 lap to go he shot off the front like a rocket for the win. Tim said, “I knew Spencer and Bill were working hard at the front so I knew I had to win the race. I sprinted and was thinking, ‘No, I’m in too big a gear’ but I just kept looking for shadows behind me and nobody was coming, so I just killed myself across the line.”

We’re lucky to have a talented and fun cat3 group right now. Spencer and Scott will finish this season as 3’s and upgrade for the start of the 2008 season.

Jeff Standish has completed his upgrade and is now a cat3 — congratulations!

We will be opening the team roster for next year very soon. If you’d like to ride for TAI please send an email to bill at taicycling.com.