After being pampered with a late start at Cherry Pie two weeks ago, 5am was a cruel return to the racing I knew from Washington. I nearly shelved my racing today 3 times....
1.) at 5:01am
2.) as I started to fall asleep again while driving at 5:30 (yes, I got there waaaay too early)
3.) when I saw the course covered in ice upon arrival
Well, of course when I was putting my trainer away after the warm-up at 8:55 I heard that we had a 30 min ice delay. Crap... so I rode around for the next 30 min visiting the restroom to hold off the hypothermia. It was great to see some of the Hammer women warming up, and it was good to have some company and great job Christina, 4th place!
Lap one started with lots of futile attacks, I covered a few but tried to stay out of the wind as best I could. Wow, its hard when you have no idea who to watch and I was second guessing every move and whether I should go cover the attack. After the first lap, I sat in and tried to hover around top 5, when people went off I tried to watch their body language to see if they might be a threat and act accordingly.
On lap two some guy from Bike Racing Attorney launched a huge attack. The way he moved (upper body bobbing like crazy) I thought "no way buddy" and kind of let him go. Well, he stayed away for about a lap before we caught him.
Lap 3 I got in a 10 man break after the dam, I thought we might stay away but it wasn't to be... and we got caught.
Lap 4... crazy Bike Racing Attorney dude didn't get enough pain from lap one so he went off again. This time he took two other guys with him, one from Team Oregon... and I was not paying attention, sipping a latte in the back. S***! These three quickly make a sizable gap, and I knew this was a very dangerous move. Team Oregon and BRA went straight to the front and in the most subtle way went 4 abreast put their arms out and slowed down. I immediately did my best Bryan Smith impersonation trying to rally a few troops to chase.
No dice... everyone sat around happy to be on a Sunday stroll. I was just about to take out my water bottle and bean the one TO guy in the back of the head with it when I saw a little opening and gunned it. I took 3 guys with me, heads down, and we just buried it in the red. We were not making much ground though and I saw my book of matches burning up like crazy... we had a few other chasers join us and help the effort.
Slowly we started whittling away the breaks' lead but I was so far in the red I was concerned that I would have nothing to finish with. We caught the break inside 1K and and I was sitting 3rd wheel coming up on 200M... as soon as I hit the 200M mark I gave it everything I had, figuring that I could maybe catch a few people off guard make some space and then see what happens.
What happened?
I could nearly taste victory when I heard a rider coming up on my left he had a super kick and left me and my empty match book to take 2nd place.
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