Due to the large turn out expected; John wisely had the A & B grouped by CAT...it would have been cool to ride with Magnus Backstedt again but I agreed with John G that it would have been too dangerous.
The B group field was pretty large; 40+ riders. Several breaks were attempted and one went away and I thought it would be a good one to jump up to....I did and got in the group of 4-5 of us. Two guys dropped off pretty quick at our 24-25mph pace and the paceline wasn't working too well at the start. I stayed on for 4 laps and was cramping and didn't feel like I was helping enough (I had a GrearLink rider with us) so I backed off to go back to the field.
They stayed away, which kind of bummed me out; I should have been able to stay on and help. I did get good position at the bell lap and was third coming out of the final turn and on the inside; the two in front of me were playing games on not wanting to lead out 300 meters from the finish so I gassed it hard and went for it. I passed them and caught my buddy Cliff (he had jumped with 1K to go) and tried to keep everybody off my back. 10 meters from the finish two AJ riders went around me....so instead of 3rd, I took 5th.
Here are the Garmin stats.
The sad part of the race was that Sandy, after being careful for the whole race and getting the woman's prime, got in a bad crash after the finish...she's better now but it was pretty bad for a bit.
I've been moving ever since....I will be doing the Sunday GearLink ride.
Ciao,
Rick
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