Cold, cold, COLD

For the second week in a row our race series was met with temperatures hovering right around 30. Crisp to say the least.

Last weeks race was pretty uneventful, full of doomed attacks that never made it more then 10 seconds off the front. The race came down to a dicey field sprint full of elbow knocking and shoving. I dropped to the rear of the group before the sprint and somehow found all the right wheels to place me second. Both scared and inspired, I made a plan for this Saturday's race which was to make a break that would work and scamper away from the field. Well, that is what happened... sort of! This week, a attack fired coming right out of neutral racing. I figured anyone silly enough to fire an attack right from the line on a 52 miler was either brave, insane or a combination of both! Apparently, 7 other riders thought this was a great idea and jumped to join. I was perfectly content to let them go, knowing they'd be back soon. Interestingly, the main group felt this was a safe break to let away too.... I watched as the gap steadily grew. 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 SECONDS! Oh crap, this is the real deal! So, that put me into bridge mode. I jumped and expected company (great cause I'm going to need help to bridge this gap...), nothing.... No takers... Ok, this is gonna hurt! Well, I made it about half was with a hard 2 minute effort and decided to take a brief hiatus. Stuck in no man's land... A peloton 20 seconds behind and a break 10 seconds ahead... Back on. Well after another hard effort I completed the bridge and was allowed to sit on the back of the break to recover.

That's when things got really spicey. Our break group was officially ripping open a gap over the main group. 9 guys working together, we would not be seen again. One of the local team guys decided he was going to have a go off the front. He took a teammate and I, now feeling recovered, decided to go to! So here we are. 3 strong, a break of a break opening a 10 to 15 second gap... and then it happened.... We rounded a corner and are flagged down by the race official and are going back to a neutral lap. Unfortunately, we were made to rejoin the main peloton.

Ok, here we go again. Back to hot racing myself and 6 others quickly attack and take up racing in proper. To make a long story short, we knew with 20 miles left we were gone for the race. Again, the lack of infighting as well as some hard efforts from everyone in the group we ripped open another large gap. Interestingly, once we opened up a minute on the peloton we knew we where safe and the break cruised easily at 20 mph or so. We all knew it was going to be a drag race in the final 200 so we rested. Cruise, cruise, cruise!

200 to go and I'm last wheel cruising at 30 in a break 7 strong... I jumped pretty hard albeit to late. I ended up 3rd... Next week...