Jul 03 2008
Pop
That low rumbling sound you heard around 7:25 was my legs spontaneously combusting on lap 5.
Tabor was great last night. I didn’t win. Didn’t even come flippin’ close. I’m not even sure I’ll get an “honorable mention” in the standings. But it didn’t matter. I went out, fooled around a bit, tried for a break, and finished out. Good fun.
So let’s recap. We had a 7 lap race. My thought was to see what sort of pace the pack was keeping and feel out if I could go on a break and make it stick. I thought attacking right after a prime could work so I figured somewhere on lap 2-4 could conceivably work. I needed to make sure I was close enough to the sprinters to draft without burning a match just to keep up.
The first prime came and went and I got cold feet. I got caught a row or two back and didn’t want to sprint through. I then had a brain-fart and pushed up to the front of the pack for no reason. Great job Mike. Actually ‘dumbass’ was the more accurate term.
Lap 3 came up and the pack held a fairly steady pace up the hill. The prime bell rang and I kept accelerating past the playground and briefly saw that we were pretty strung out. It didn’t seem ideal but I took it and went for the break.
I pushed it down the hill and around the corner to the reservoir. I peeked back and had a 3-5 second gap. I set a strong and what I thought was a sustainable pace up the hill.
I had a millisecond vision of making it stick, of all the glory, the crowd cheering a successful break, and more importantly, a delicious bacon and mushroom pizza from Hot Lips that was up for grabs on the prime.
Ohh, how I loves the bacon.
This would be about where you heard the pop.
The pack picked me up, chewed me around a bit like a warm piece of cud, and efficiently pooped me out the back over the rest of the hill. 25 meters short. Crap.
I spent a fair portion of the next lap trying to sit in and recover. My head was down, solely focusing on staying with the lead pack. The final bell rang and I sort of knew that I’d probably not be challenging for the final sprint. Heading up the hill as the pace picked up significantly, I backed off and eased it in. 20th…25th…something like that. Didn’t really matter.
What did matter was heading out for a beer. I met up with Bob Jacobs and we went down to Belmont Station for a couple post-race beers. Bear Republic Racer X (ridiculously hoppy) and Stone Oaked Bastard (good…not too oak-ey).
Beer never tasted so good.