Westlake Crit Race B Group or NASCAR time

First race for me at Westlake - Chris does a great job at this and it a great way to get in a great workout, team tactic training and to see whose in shape vs riding into shape. The B group SBRs comprised of; Ian, Jason, Dave, Gary & I. Bob was covertly riding for SBR due to Spin not getting their kits in yet. Uh, what's up with dat? :-) Two Stark guys, some RGFs and assorted GDIs (Jim N) were in attendance.
17 laps of fun is what was promised. After about 3 laps, I had a brain fart and bolted up ahead of the group at the last turn and stuck it on 27 mph and got a decent gap on the group. Darrin Kert (Cervelo Soloist) from Stark comes up on me and I start thinking, hey this could be a nice break and make the field work. That dude is a horse; he sticks it on cruise control at 26 and wants to know if I'm serious about getting away. Sure, why not! Mind you, this is coming from a sprinter whose time trialing consists of.....oh, nothing. I was hurting some from the escape and the Stark guy was happy to just pull me til I recovered. Like a dumb a$$ I wanted to help out before I had recovered and he wisely pulled away after I pulled and couldn't maintain. Jason had waited to make a move and by the time he caught up to me I was going backwards quicker than forwards and I couldn't help him to bridge up, mistake #2. I ended up rejoin the group, getting recovered and then worked on getting Jason or Gary to break away into a chase group. That involved a couple of more big efforts, some blocking (or attempts of) but nothing sticked. The other Stark guy did an excellent job of blocking, slowing down any lame attempts of bring the break back.
What happened next was surreal; it's 2 laps to go and SBR finally gives up on chasing (or pretending to) and we fall back and get organized to do a 5 person lead out train for Dave. The bell laps sounds, we have formed in the back and the order is loosely figured out: Gary, me, Ian, Jason and then Dave. Coming out of the chicane, we have formed and Gary is starting to give it the gas on the left outside just inside the double yellow. We are moving up the side of the group and things are looking great and then the Stark guy suddenly decides he wants to occupy my space; he runs into me and in an instant our bodies/bikes collide. Call it luck, good training that Brent Evans gave me and my old team Windchill, I was able to get an elbow up and in front of the guy, hold both of us up and keep from going onto the other side of the road. Damn, that was close! And stupid.....nobody is perfect, but you have to look before moving into someone else's space. Nuf said. Needless to say that screwed up the momentum of our lead out, we tried to get it going again. Gary gave it the gas again, pulled off, I jumped and then realized that we were not all together. I sat up and waited for Jason to bring up Dave and try it again. Jason ended up muscling up to get second. A good effort from SBR, but we definitely need to do more work.

Stats:
1:26:15
32.9 miles
HR: 151 avg, 170 max
MPH: 23.5 avg, 32.2 max
watts: 258 avg, 955 max(?)
CAD: 97 avg, 128 max
temp:started at 80' ended at 73'

Thanks for Reading,
Rick