I think this title is the best way I can sum up how my first weeked of racing went this year. Pretty sad when even if the competition puts down their guns to press their bare jugular against my cold blade and it's not even sharp enough to make a red mark...
See this nice little picture of a train? I'd love to be able to post this as a representation of the power I poured out in the road race but unfortunatly it's more a symbol of how even the greatest turn of dumb luck couldn't save me out there.
So I toe the line feeling fine and ready to rock for a bit and being a little excited to get to go fast with the nice tail wind we were starting with. But that little bit of going fast quickly turned into everybody giving it everything in their 53x11 and the draft helping very little. Before I even had a chance to get into the grove of being in a pack (only my second group ride of the year) I was spit out the back and seemed done for the day. I continued to crank along a bit since I knew if anything this meant I needed to get me some more miles on the bike and watched the pack get smaller and smaller in the distance.
Then towards the end of the first of 3 laps...holly CRAP!! The whole field was stopped just waiting for me, or more accurately waiting for a long, slow-moving train to get out of the way. Whew I'm safe, right? Well for a bit anyway. I tucked into the back for the headwind streaches to get towed along very nicely. Unfortunately the nature of a looped course meant that we had more fast tail-winds coming up just around the corner, and sure enough, POp goes the Steve-O. By nearly even dumber luck a second train almost stopped the pack again to let me get back but not quite. Game over. Time to head back to the car early and take my crown as the only DNF of the field that day.
Now I'm wondering if I actualy deserve to go to bed now or if I need to go hop on the rollers for a couple of hours to earn it....
