The Course: 10 laps a of 1.5 mile circuit
The Field: 4/5 Men
The Finish: 8th
I read another local guy's description of the 4/5 field that was pretty accurate, having taken part in that race. His observation was that we rode around slowly for 9.8 laps and then really fast for .2. That's about right, but hopefully a trend we can buck.
Not sure if it was the hill or what but there just wasn't a lot of motivation for a lot of guys to ride hard. I suppose I'm just as much to blame as anybody because I was at the front and on the front several times but never really drilled it, not even up the hill. And because of that we all came to the bottom of the hill in a big group with 30+ guys confusing themselves for a Alejandro Valverde type.
My job coming into this race was to stay at the front and play defense against any dangerous looking moves. Nothing really ever took off. We let two guys dangle for two laps but when we did bring them back they had both completely dropped the anchors, clearly a move that wasn't going to go to the line.
The pre-race plan was to drop Mike off about a quarter of the way up the hill if it was still groupo compacto. It was, but I couldn't find Mike in the group so the plan changed to follow wheels and hope for the best result I could get. I also had no idea where Thom or Jay were but before the right sweeper that leads to the hill I heard Thom tell me he was behind me and he had Jay on him. At that point, it made sense to try and drill it and lead Jay out as best we could. In theory that would have been great, in practice we left it too late and by the time I got room to go, people were sprinting.
Jay is VERY fast for 5-10 seconds, just like a good sprinter should be, and he used that burst to get through the traffic and finish 4th. Thom came by me right at the line for 7th and I got 8th. Mike came out of no where picking his way through the chaos for 15th. It wasn't the plan we drew up but 4 guys in the race and 4 guys in the top 15! Not too bad and a great start to the season.
From an entirely selfish perspective I think taking the split second to make the decision to try and find a hole to lead out Thom and Jay cost me a few spots. I had the wheels I was going to go with as my own lead out and abandoned them. Though, after watching a very grainy video of the finish I don't think I'd have won because I wasn't aware that the French National Champ was even still there so obviously I'd been following the wrong wheels.
All things considered I think everybody on the team did exactly what they needed to do to be there at the end. Thom and Jay weren't sure how it was going to play out on the hill so they were being conservative in the field. Since it never got really hard they were still there and were able to take high placings because of it. I was able to stay at the front, watch the moves, play defense and still had plenty left at the end. I'm looking forward to being the aggressor in a few of the upcoming races. Eventually some move has to stick right?
Video of the finish:
A few photos:
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