Stage two was a fast crit course with 5 left hand turns on brand new pavement with two covered wooden bridges to fly over – fun stuff. 40 guys started, and I think only 4 or 5 were pulled, so it was elbow to elbow for 40 minutes in a good sized pack. I freakin’ LOVE this kind of racing – diving into turns, chasing, recovering, chasing, thinking you’re about to die, and finding a reserve at the end……….sometimes.
…So I got into that break because there was a guy off the front who looked like he could motor and with 3 laps to go, I wanted to give it a go. As we came around the start/finish and headed into the wind, I took a dig and got onto his wheel after about 45 seconds of chasing. He was going fast, and I couldn’t pull through even though he shouted at me to go go go! No no no I said, give me 20 seconds to recover. We traded pulls, but he was doing more work than me and with one and a half laps left we had just about 50 yards on the group. My teammates were doing their best to sit on the front and not chase, but the pack was restless and I could see the gap coming down. We both knew we were toast, so I sat up to catch a breath and lost about 12 places in 10 seconds. I climbed back in, hung on for 2 miles, and managed to get back near the front going into the last two turns where it’s tough to pass.
I didn’t have the mental wherewithal to overcome my body’s lack of strength to go for the win, so I rolled across at the back of the lead group in 6th place, happier than a frat guy sitting between two Kardashians at the Ghost Bar drinking on Lamar Odom’s tab until 3am. All of the guys on the team finished in the front half of the bunch, so we had a good day on the bike with no crashes, or rashes. I got a nice handful of points for that finish which put me in second place going into the Sunday road race.
No comments:
Post a Comment