The first half of the race was relatively uneventful, except poor Kevin and Mike W., who ran into some crap luck and raced the "2015 Quabbin TT" instead. That's not as fun. Jeremy kept his eyes open at the front of the field and John and I surfed the middle of the pack with Brad (first race as a 4 though you wouldn't know it) in the mix as well. I wasn't sure what to expect coming into the race after a crazy and exhausting first week of parenting (daughter born last Saturday!) but it's been a long winter of training and I was eager to race. I made a move at the top of a steep climb on 32A with two other guys, Scott Y, a strong cyclocross rider from NCC who had been aggressive all day, and some tall guy with a beard and red kit. We rolled off a strung out front of the pack and drilled a descent to open up a 100m gap. Here's where my brain (sadly) took over. I thought two things and talked myself out of the move: 1) There's 20 miles left, a ton of climbing and this isn't gonna stick, and 2) I like my chances in a bunch uphill sprint finish. I SHOULD have been thinking, "I'm in the break, let's ride like hell and see what happens!" Hindsight is a terrible/beautiful thing, and my legs did crap out on the final climb so my chances in the break probably would have ended sadly, but of course I'll never know because I let my two breakaway cronies ride away and tucked back into the field.
A short while later the chase began. At first it was really unorganized and sloppy. Then Jeremy started drilling it, taking nasty pulls and ordering others to pull through. He, John and Brad could have been blocking for a certain teammate at that point, so the fact that we were chasing felt silly, but that was the situation. Jeremy worked his tail off and burned an entire book of matches to give one of us a shot on the finale. Good stuff right there (I owe you one, Jeremy - yes, even in a crit!) The chasing paid off and we caught the break duo on Rt 9 with maybe 10k to go. I was thinking 'perfect, here's that shot at the uphill bunch sprint.'
The thing about this sport is one moment you're feeling like a champ, then moments later, 200m from the finish on a 5k climb, for example, your legs seize up and say 'go home!' and you watch a small group finish just ahead of you. Blame it on fitness, blame it on over-thinking, blame it on too many sleepless nights, or don't blame anything at all - it was a damn fine day of suffering with teammates at the bike race. More, please.
It was "deja-vu all over again" as I had done the Quabbin RR ITT the weekend before. Also kind-of ironic I was telling how the roads were in awesome shape after that ride to puncture on a pothole. I hadn't anticipated being in the middle of Rt. 9. (Note to self: Be at the front of the pack so you can see the potholes before you're upon them.) I chased Mike W. for probably 15 miles before I finally caught him in Shutesbury just before the big climb. At the same time we picked-up one other racer who had fallen off the pace -- the only guy I passed all day that actually hadn't thrown-in the towel and tried to work with us/me -- but he only lasted about 10 minutes. Mike seemed to be losing steam on the hills on 32A, and I rode away and finished the remainder of the race solo.
