What a great event. I missed it last year because I was still recovering from that nasty illness. Iwas looking forward to it this year, even though I’ve been someone undertrained. The race was only 30 miles, but the temps were in the mid 90s, and there was not a whole heck of a lot of shade on the course… and I’ve only been racing 45 minutes at a time all year.

I started at the back of the large field, but managed to get myself to the front on the first lap. We went sort of fast up the hill the first go around. Evidently, this was to be repeated each lap.

The fast stretch approaching the hill, the hill, and the slight uphill following the hill sucked it out of me on each lap. The rest of it wasn’t so bad. After staying towards the front for a lap and a half, I decided to move up on one of the downhills on each lap, and then filter towards the back going up the hill.

Each lap ticked away slowly, but I was managing to stay in there. I was definitely deep in the pain bucket, but with the field sprint getting closer and closer each lap, I was able to surpress that pain for a while longer.

Problem was, I was pretty much all-in by the time the sprint rolled around. Fueller took a hard pull at the front of the pack, that about shot me out of the rear of the pack with a couple to go(or one to go, I don’t remember). The last lap I was somewhat lazy, and I started to wiggle my way up towards the front. I got on Eduardo’s wheel for a while, but then I took a different wheel on the outside. I was a couple behind Vandeven as we rounded the final corner, and somewhere in the top 20. I managed to bump bars with someone through the round-a-bout, but that didn’t really phase me. I lit up the sprint coming out of the chicane, but I was in too much traffic (my bad for not being further up). Vandeven and I just about rode up someone’s ass. He went left and I went right into someone elses ass. I wiggled out of it, and blew past some folks coming into the line, but it was only good for 12th place. Vandeven managed 7th, so I will go left next time.

The p/1/2 race was insane.