I went into this race feeling awesome. For the first time in two months my quads weren't sore, I'd eaten well and I had been sleeping incredibly. I may have had a false sense of security but I felt like I could actually contend, probably not win but at least finish with the lead group and put in a good showing. It was not to be.
When I showed up at the start line it was my understanding that we would be doing one large loop and one small loop. Turns out we had to do two. Normally this wouldn't have been bad BUT upon arrival to the staging area there was a 20 mph cross wind: bad f***ing news for Derf. I'm a decent climber, can hold my own in sprints and can descend fairly well but one thing I don't do well is damn cross winds!
I'll keep this short and sweet: the peleton soft-pedaled for the first few miles with everyone looking around waiting to see who was going to do work. We hit the base of the climb and the pace picked up a little to a good climbing tempo. I was sitting near the front of the pack and watched as a guy with calves as large as my quads accelerated off the front. I knew this was a good wheel so I sat on to try and get a leash on this guy and prevent anything from happening too soon. No such luck, a short while later I feel a tingling in my legs and look down to see a reading of 192 BPM on my computer: bad news. I sat up and let myself get absorbed so someone else could do the work. Oh and someone sure did do work, I look up and see junior phenom Joe Prettyman just bump up the pace and lay waste to the field. This is at mile 6.
The rest of my "race" went as follows: 1 hour spent above my lactate threshold balls-to-the-wall chasing, 6 mile screaming descent followed by another hour right below my lactate threshold. This got me through the big loop and the first little one. We'd whittled our chase group down to 6 and I still had one teammate with me. I was more than willing to help that teammate...and then he attacked. I was spent so I coasted to the finish line with another guy who had popped. Low and behold I see 8 of my teammates waiting there, those who had abandoned the both the 1/2 and 3 fields. I made the decision that if one of our teammates came across in a later chase group and wanted to ride the last loop I'd go with them. 8-10 minutes go by and that teammate shows up. We take off, none of us has any water and the wind is just as bad as before. A group of 3 other teammates catch us and we soft pedal the last 5 miles just at a conversational pace: best part of the race.
After recovering from dehydration and eating my weight in food I had a realization: I received the exact same place by waiting 8 minutes and soft-pedaling half the inner loop with my teammates as I would have if I had hung on for another pointless chase for 12 miles at a death pace.
Thank you very much Chad Sperry for another race where there's more DNFs than finishers. Until next year...
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