It's so much more fun at the front of the race

Saturday 8/11/07 - Birchwood RR, Square Lake

The 4/5 men's race started promising for the Blue train. We started with 8 in blue out of 36. Kurt and Brian Hasty had the jets on for the "neutral" start. I heard later we were rolling 24-25 mph to the start (easy there Trigger!). I couldn't tell since my computer wasn't working. Once we started the Big Diesel set a hard tempo that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the race. This race was definitely faster than some of the others this year. At Ken Woods and Durand we bunched up and no one could pass. On Sat the field was a lot more strung out and one could make a move. I was a lot smarter and aggressive this time around and managed to get to, but not on, the front early and managed to hold my position. From what I could tell the blue were all pretty close to the front and we were working well at holding our positions well and not spend too much time out in the wind, although not so much with the team work. We'll have to work on that. The first time up the Nason hill really split us up, with 13 guys making it into the group, including 3 boys in blue; Guy, Todd Sample and myself. Our little group of 13 was working pretty well together, although we weren't really rotating much, which was fine with me. I pretty much just sat in the entire time until Guy went out (keep reading). Sometime into the 2nd lap a GW rider went off of the front and his teammate did a great job of blocking for him. After the 2nd trip up Nason there was an attack and Guy managed to get away and bridge up to the GW rider, who was about 30 seconds ahead of us. At that point Todd and I joined the GW rider to block the pack where we could and pull back any attacks, although I don't want to overstate our contribution. We stayed like that until the 3rd trip up Nason when our group finally shattered and it was every man for himself. The head wind on the downhill section was fun, especially when we got to the turn and had to climb into the finish with a killer cross wind. I was thinking more of survival and finishing top 10 than finishing in the money. From what I've heard Guy managed to out-sprint the GW rider for the "W". I was cooked but still tried to catch the rider in front of me. It didn't work but I still got 10th.
In my opinion, it was a great, fast course with a lot of action and roads wide enough that one could do something. I also got a great handling test when on the 2nd time down into Marine on St. Croix (which was a quite fast descent) I managed to lock up the rear wheel and started fish tailing about 1/2 way down the hill. I thought I was going to hit the deck when I figured that all I needed to do was release the brake, straighten out, and then try to slow down for the hard right. It worked, Gott sei Dank, and I kept the rubber on the pavement. It was also fun to have neutral water support, although I've never gotten a bottle that way before and wasn't very good at it. I was smart enough to try to get a bottle early in the water zone and by the 3rd person I managed to get a good grip on one.
Anyway, 10th in that race was a pretty good day. My previous results haven't been that great (DNF, 20th, 28th in Durand, Ken Woods and Gluek, respectively), so it's nice to put in a top 10 in a 4/5 race and show that yes, I can actually ride with the 4s and do well. Now it's tune up for the state championships and then some time off for some recovery.

Oh yeah, and apparently I'm supposed to get married or something? Hmmm...