This was a fun race today. Very windy, 1-mile, 8-turn course with strongish field of fifty going for 90 minutes and the IL jersey.
Last year, I was an idiot here and attacked like someone possessed for an hour, but I never got farther than no-man’s-land and then was dropped in the end. This year, especially with no teammates toeing the line with me, I was smarter staying put for the first half-hour. Of course, it was only part-smarts; it was also part-needing to get used to that brutal wind knocking me all over the place (Stinger 60s + 130-something-pound me + huge gusts = SQUIRREL!) and part-just not being quite as fast too.
Anyway, chases and bridges looked good and something was definitely brewing in the middle third of the race. I got active and gave a few gos with groups, but ISCorp, Nova, and ABD (the biggest teams there today) were doing great jobs interrupting chase groups with their men in the break. So nothing really definitive went…until something weird happened.
Maybe it was the feeding that they opened up for a short window on the backside that put things out of whack—gaps definitely opened more in the windy section because of people reaching for bottles—or maybe the wind was just so strong it really took its toll, but either way the pack started splinter at 60-70 minutes in. I found myself at the wrong end and missed out on the first ten guys. On the one hand, it was frustrating. On the other, tactics became really simple at that point: Every man for himself, just ride like hell. And that’s what I did.
Things kept breaking up the rest of the day. As I understand, the break finished with two out of the original three, then there were ten or so guys, then there was my group, and then people scattered all over.
Not my best race, but quite a good time, actually. Fun to go hard and have a crit play out a bit differently than normal. I just kind of went really hard the second half until I came in at 24th. Ok. Cool. Fun.
