It was over before it began...

Today was the Tour de Terra Cotta. The weather was beautiful and the course was awesome. Completely closed with no yellow line rule. During the weekend I was having problems with a tendon on the back of my knee and was hoping that it wouldnt hurt me today.

We got there early for my girlfriend to race the 26km race. She was terrified to do a road race but did terrific! For not having much big group riding practice she held her own and finished 3rd overall for the women in the race.

My race started with a 3km neutral start which ended just after the first hill. I never knew the race could be won in the neutral start! You would almost think it the way people were crazily jockeying for positions. Not wanting to get into trouble I found myself sliding back. Right near the end of the 3km there was a nasty pile up, and I got stuck behind it! There was a group of around 20 of us that were now 30secs or more off the pack.

Out of this group of 20 only about 5 of us were willing to work to get back into the race. The group sucked at taking turns, with no one wanting to push before the hill. I would signal that I was done and needed a switch and no one would take my spot so Id have to let up because I had nothing left and once the speed dropped about 10kph someone would take over. Due to this we were never able to catch up.

Throughout the race the pack was dropping people and picking people up. Towards the end we even dropped greg paupst who did a lot of work in the pack early on and didnt have enough. Fellow HCC rider Sarah Rasmussen fell back to our group for a bit, she just didnt havent have enough to stay on to the group till the end due to her hard riding at provincial track cycling.

For the last lap I was planning on getting some work on setting myself up for a good sprint. On the third stretch a reckless mattamy homes/racer sportif rider made a move cutting me off. I made the decision it wasnt worth crashing in this race , we were only fighting for 70th position. Took it easy until the end to roll into 90th position out of 172.

Tactically I should have been in the front of the pack to start and throughout the race to avoid problems. I liked how I tried to take control, although it didnt work. Im definitely getting stronger and I was glad that I made it the whole race. With an avg speed the same as my other races but with 40km extra tacked on, I was glad I had enough conditioning to make it.

Next up for me is the WOB ocup race next weekend. With a good result I could take over 1st place in the ocup standings!