Master 35+ Cat 4/5

Teammates: None

I drove down with Kashy from 2 Wheel Racing. We left really early which was nice to have plenty of time to prepare for the race. The field was nearly full with close to seventy racers. I knew the course from last year, got in a few laps and had a relly good warm-up on the trainer. Kashy gave me some $5 pill that was suppose to “make me breathe better.”  Back to my days of Grateful Dead shows I was like, “hell ya, let”””’’s take some pills.” I don””””t know what I took but I felt great once the race started.

Wanting to stay away from any chaos I quickly got to the front and pretty much stayed there just surfing wheels. I did some efforts at the very front just to make people believe that I was working and not a total wheel suck. I contemplated some primes but mainly wanted to be situated for the finish.  Kashy rode many times at the front and ended up getting the most aggressive rider award! Luckily with five laps he dropped back to recover for the finish.

With 1.5 laps to go all of these Taleo guys came to the front. I jumped on their scene but then all of a sudden I am second wheel! Yikes, not the position I wanted to be in with one lap to go. Up the hill I got swarmed as Kashy and about 8 other riders went flying by me. I was in the center of all of these riders and could not go right or left and sitting about 10 deep. Just when I had given up hope a hole opened up in front of me just before the second to last turn. It was like an actual instinctual surfing decision of, “Thread this needle, do it NOW!”

When I blasted through that hole I was all of a sudden sitting 4th man behind Kashy! As we went through the last turn I followed his wheel all the way to the finish. We passed two fading contenders and a track rider guy blew pass us to take the win. In the final 20 meters I worked my way pass Kashy and threw my bike for second place and Kashy got third. We were on cloud nine the rest of the day. The negative side was that Velo Promo seemed very grumped up and did not do any podiums until later in the day. Oh well, what can you do. It was the great day that mattered.