Racing in Mass day 2

Today's race was a 130k road race, with a few long climbs, and a few short, steeper climbs, that made up a 20 mile lap. The rain stopped about 2 hours before the start, and all the roads dried up, so that was a nice start to the day. All we wore were armwarmers, that we rolled down only a few clicks into the race.

Racing went hard, and aggressive right off the line. Mark found himself up the road with 30+ seconds, and thought it was gone, but the pack brought it back. One after another, Mark and I were taking turns, trying to get a split in the pack, and get up the road. Not many were lasting, the wind was making the pack a very popular place. Finally, I managed to get a small group up the road, and I though "this is it" until a group of about 25 came across. So my "break" was more of a pack (which Mark was in as well.) We stayed out for a lap and a half, got caught, and I went again, I was alone for a while, and somehow, the field split again, and we were back in a 25-30+ man group! I was getting fed up with it, and Mark and I really started putting on the pressure, trying hard to split the "break" but nothing worked.

In the end, with about 10k to go, I took off up the road, all out, got caught yet again with about 4k to go, looked around, attacked again, and got caught with about 1k to go. I was toast now. It was all or nothing for me in the last few kilometers, and it turned out to be nothing. Mark ended up 8th in the "break" sprint.

It was a weird race. I've never been in a race where every break had more than 20 riders, and just wouldn't split. But that's racing.

The races down here are more about fine tuning our fitness then getting results. We're coming up on our trip to Europe, and we need to be on all 8 cylinders if we want to make things happen over there. So this trip was perfect. Mark and I both put out some good power, that we'll fine tune over the next two weeks behind my mom's new "scooter to get to work on, that my dad's going to be motorpacing me behind." I'll post some pictures of that soon!

Next up, the Springbank RR in London, Ontario.

Till then....