Apparently there is some very popular site by the same name as I used to call this blog. So much for me thinking I had a clever and original title, forgive my blogging faux pas. Anyway, no more attempts to be witty, I'll just call this "thing" L&L for now. Besides, maybe that will be harder to google, but probably not.
Road cycling season is finally underway, what better way to start then with a 2.2 mile TT. After moving up to collegiate As, I knew I'd get blown away in this event, nonetheless, I still wanted to see if I could go any faster then last year. It's hard to compare times, because they added a section at the top of the course, maybe I was few seconds faster, but not much.
The road race I was much more looking forward to. The dreary, drizzling rain from the morning was slowly fading out, and the dark clouds began to drift away. Almost on perfect cue, while we were all staged and minutes before the start, the sun broke out and we had blue skies for the rest of the day. I love it when that happens.
I was hoping to start off the 65 miles with a parade lap, but that didn't happen. There were some good attacks, and the field got really stretched out, but basically stuck together. The third lap felt particularly tough, for a while I was in a very delicate position, totally at my limit to just hang on. I looked up once and noticed several big buzzards circling around, with any extra effort, they'll be picking at my carcass for sure. Finally, two big groups got away, one with about 10, and another slightly smaller. Suddenly, the pace really relaxed. I think we all realized that the points were up the road. We still had a group of about 10, but we mostly just soft pedaled the 4th lap. A few of us tried to organize some basic rotation, but there was not a lot of motivation.
About halfway up the long straight climb on the 5th lap, I suddenly felt my front rim bottom out, and I was involuntarily out of the race. That first section of road had some really nasty potholes, and it definitely sent a bunch of people walking back with flats.
It was disappointing to flat out of the race, with only about 10 miles left, especially as I starting to feel much better again and recovered from lap 3. Just riding that group in to the finish would have put me in the top half of the field, but can't change what happened, and many others had the same problem.
Tomorrow is another day, and another race.
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