Tour de Dungeness # 2

This was the last race for the Tour de Dung(eness) up in Sequim. Once again we were treated with great weather. It did seem a little colder than it was the weekend before but it wasn't raining and the sun was out. Chad, Shawn and myself arrived and got all set up and ready to go with about 20 min to spare on the trainers. My dad came up with the trailer so we had a nice place to change in. Your awesome dad. We lined up 10 min early to make sure we made the start. This week it was a different race official and we didn't actually start until 3 min after our start time of 9:50. Go figure. The plan this week was the same as it was last week. Get Chad to the front of the race at the end for a possible lead out. The race was ok and the slinky effect was in full force. Slow down, speed up, on the brakes, on the gas. Pretty standard operating procedure. It makes it a bit more stressful for sure. We again were doing 4 laps for a total of 48 miles. The last lap is when it started to liven up a bit. We had 4 guys last year move over to a different team. It was nice to see them again and weird to see them in different kits but good to race with them. One of them took off on a flyer about 3 miles into the last lap. I jumped and bridged up to him and we had a group of 4 that rotated through a couple times. We had a little gap but I didn't want to do any more work because I knew it wouldn't stick. So I sat up and we got caught. I was a little nervous because when I bridged up to the break I was pinging on my heart rate montitor 192 bpm. In the past when I get that high it is normally during a sprint finish. Thankfully I was able to recover once back in the group. I sat in for the rest of the lap until we were about 2 miles away from the finish. At that point it was difficult to move to the front. Chad was always near the front so he was in a good position. When I closed the break down and we got caught I went to the back of the pack. It took some time to get up near the front and then when I did everyone was real nervous and you could feel the pack and how tense everyone was. I was up on the left near the yellow line and usually that line will open up as the pack speeds up. However, the pack really wasn't speeding up much. I was beginning to get frustrated and then a opening showed itself and I just stood up and sprinted to the front. Once I got there I realized we had another half mile to go and I was already on the front pulling the pack. So I decided the hell with it and shifted to a higher gear and started to ramp it up. Chad was behind me directing me where to move to in case someone tried going around us. I moved over to the yellow line again to give us the best position for the right hand corner coming up. I wanted to atleast get us to the corner in a good spot then try and sprint out of the corner to spread the field out some more. Just as we approached I stood up to give it some more gas but the legs told me I was out of gas. I sat back down just as we entered the corner and several guys came by. I stood and pedaled in hopes of seeing where Chad was up at the front. It was close and Chad got 2nd place but was literally inches from getting the win. This was a huge turn around for both of us compared to last week. Way to go Chad.

Now on to the Pacific Raceways Series on Tuesday nights in the Cat 1, 2, 3 field. Chad and I decided to move up to this field to gain more experience and much more fitness. We hope to hang with the big guns in order to help us upgrade to 3's. Then down to Independence Valley Road Race on Saturday 3/26/11.