Good Friday Road Race

Time: 1:24:12 (-59s) 39.4km/h Position: 18/190 (S4/M3)

Last night I started to get a little congested and this morning it got worse and I had a slight cough, not a good start. It took a little longer to get there then I thought so by the time I got to the registration tent I had 30min to warm-up, that's if they wouldn't have ran out of pind, which they did. If it wasn't for Brandon Etzl's mom then I might not have had a number on my jersey.

The start felt pretty good until 10min later where there was a huge crash with carbon and sunglasses flying everywhere that had me ride off the road. I slowed down a bit because I've never seen a road crash from slow close and some guy came by me and said the medical team was right behind us already. De Cal had taken off on a two-man break and I had no gas to bridge.

The next two laps felt very uncomfortable, I was having a hard time bridging small gaps and keeping up on the climbs. By the third lap I started to feel much better and we had realed in all but one, who ended up winning the race. I was right up at the front and had enough gas to pick up the pace when it was my turn to pull. About 3km away from the line I tried to get away but that didn't work at all and neither did my second attempt. Coming in to the last corner I knew my race was over because I had spent too much energy trying to get away rather than save it for a group sprint. I made my way through the cassette to my biggest gear and started to get a little momentum when there was a huge pile up right in front of me that I managed to miss but in the heat of it all I forgot I was still in my biggest gear and the top 15 or so were already across the line. I took it easy because there was no one around me and I managed to pick up another spot when Dan Dakin ran his bike across the line.

I will chalk this one up as a learning experience and hopefully things go different at the Burlington road in just over a month. I'm excited to compare our average speed to that of the S3 field, our winner was 40km/h right on. Huge congrats the De Cal for being in a break for so long and still managing to take the field sprint and to Etzl for his win in the Cadet field.

What a perfect day for a race, over 20 in April, nice. Now it's time for some fishing.