Its been awhile since I posted a blog, but I thought that this one would be a good race to write about.
This year brought some top notch racers including 2 Tour De France racers. I never thought that I would be toeing the line with guys like Christian Vande Velde! The race starts out on a long blacktop stretch that brings some high speeds, I was sitting pretty close to the front and could see that 3 guys (I think Cole House, Jason Mccartney, and Steve Tillford) had already broke away from the group and were drafting the 4-wheeler, I new right then that it would be an interesting race for the leaders. The group of hundreds of riders was weaving back and forth on the hwy and eventually bridged back up before rosies field.
My race was pretty uneventful and seemed like the miles were just clicking away. I was in a good group which included Scott Cole, and ended up taking some good pulls without really killing myself, and always staying near the front of the pack. I new from last year that you want to be in at least the top 5 people in the group because the yo yo effect is huge with all the punchy climbs, and can easily get popped off the back.
We hit OO and I couldn't believe that we were already that far, but I new in the back of my mind that the pace would pick up and the hills were going to hurt. Not to long after this we hit a bumpy down hill section and when I got to the bottom I noticed my chain had fell of the big ring. I pedaled a few turns and it wouldn't go back on, I had to stop and fix it.... after I got it back on I just watched the group riding away... I thought for sure that I could bridge back up but with the high winds I just couldn't get there.
I ended up riding from there on to the last 5 miles by myself, picking off a few riders here and there. Then Ben S caught me out of nowhere, we rode together for a few miles I was doing to much work for him and he ended up attacking on a climb after I took a long pull and I couldn't respond. Then with close to 1 mile to go I could see another group of 4 riders gaining on me. I gave every last ounce of whatever I had left to sprint to the finish, I was hammering, looking over my left shoulder not knowing that there was someone on my right side and lost to him by a tenth of a second.
I learned a lot from this race, and am already looking forward to next year. I hope I get in again!
