Sunday 22 April 2012

Why Greg Hated Road At First

Despite good fitness yesterday there's no analysis other than to say I raced badly. I let the early stuff happen, made a couple of 'let's see what's up' moves that didn't reduce the quiver of arrows, and then made one really good attack. The wrong mix of guys came with me. Shit happens. It was enough guys that if we'd just rotated like a group ride where no one cared we might have stayed away longer than the 3/4 of a lap or whatever it was. My problem to solve was that one or two strong-ish guys had come with no intention to do anything other than exploit an established gap. The second the break slowed, they'd counter. Which one guy did. He wasn't as strong as he thought he was and provided some impetus to reduce the group to smaller numbers and a higher concentration of strength. Unfortunately he blew himself out. I rolled by with some guys but it was all fd up at that point and blah. It took a while for a chunk of the field to catch us, and a few guys countered and stayed away. I was close to havin it to go with but didn't. The rest of the race was trying to answer the question of 'with so many teams not in the break, why aren't any chasing?'. Well, a teammate of two of the guys in the break pulled an ultimate cheesedick move on me, sprinting me to a corner and then locking up the brakes, nearly causing a nice pileup, so my motivation became anything other than his preferred outcome. Sometimes being that pissed causes you to race well. In this case I would have been better served doing something other than all of the chasing but I was stupid and got no good outcomes. At the end I tried to launch Mike but it was too little too early. This is the first race in a long time where I wish I had it to do over but I guess that's a good sign. I'd be lying my ass off if I said I wasn't awfully excited for Greenbrier next week. The guys who are stronger and better than me will beat me, and that's that.

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