Spring Series P,1,2 2/23/08

I woke up Saturday morning with a pretty good case of the pre-race jitters. It was the first race of the season, I was on a new team, it was a Pro, 1,2 race and I had only ridden 1 hour earlier in the week as I was having problems trying to "ass"ess some saddle problems that really had me "bum"med out. I didn't even know if I could sit down to pedal, let alone finish a race.

When I arrived at Donaldson I saw several of the CTM boys and we went out for a warm up lap. I mentioned to Rodney that I was a little nervous about the race and he said it would be "no problem" we would just be going about "30mph from the gun". Yep, thats just the kind of reassurance I was looking for...

When they called the field to the line I jumped right up front heeding Rodney's prophetic description of the start. I looked behind me and saw what had to be 100+ guys that weighed 50lbs less than me and were half my age. Good times I thought, good times....Sure enough, ready, set, go! Bam! 30mph into the first corner. I quickly went from the front row to the middle of the group. Attacks flying of the front one after another. I could see my teammates covering moves and I was thinking to myself...."Self, you better get to the front and help out, I mean, at least TRY to make a good first impression." I looked around and saw Josh on the inside and made my way up to him, asked if I could slide by on the white line and was soon at the front just behind Jim Cunningham. A move had just gone up the road with Boyd Johnson from DLP, one of his team mates and a guy from Fiordifrutta. I asked if anyone from CTM was in it. That would be "No" Jim replied. So I decided to bite the bullet and jumped across and took Bruce Humphries from the Hincapie Dasani team with me. When we bridged up I was gassed, it was the first time I'd even breathed hard in a week. I took my obligatory pulls through to first lap and quickly realized that if a didn't sit in I was going to get spit out the back. So, I sat on for the most part and every once in a blue moon when I thought I had recovered, I'd take a pull or two only to quickly resume my position in the back. The other guys in the break were working hard and we were maintaining our gap.

With a lap and a half to go the the skinny dude from Fiordifrutta attacked and was quite simply never seen again.....we were the bad habits he had just dropped.

Boyd and Bruce both attacked our group on the last lap, but every one was pretty crispy, and no one was going anywhere. With about 1k to go I looked back from my post at the rear I had been so steadfastly protecting all day and saw the Time jersey of Andy Baker coming across and he had Thad Dulin in tow. I knew if the cat and mouse games continued in our group we would be caught for sure. So as Paul Sherwin would say, I "reached into my suitcase of courage" (except in my case it was my tote bag of desperation) went to the front of our group and led everyone up to the line trying not to get caught by Andy and Thad. Somehow, it worked and my remaining three breakaway companions sprinted around me at the line with Boyd getting 2nd, Bruce 3rd and the other DLP guy 4th, I rolled across in fifth, completely spent. I thanked all the CTM guys for keeping me out front and went home to sit on a bag of ice, elevate my legs and get ready for the double race action on Sunday. For me and team CTM it was a great start to the season!