Turtle Pond, Loudon, NH and the start of a new road racing season. Having skipped Marblehead two weeks ago, I decided to get the season going. The race was five laps, with an "extra" climb up the big hill. Not being a hill climber, my plan was to work for my teammates John and Peter. Within the first 20 miles, there were a couple of small attacks, which the NEBC team did a great job of covering. Somewhere around mile 22 though, two riders went off the front and everyone watched. Kudos to Chris B of BRC, who sat on the front of the race for the next 2o miles or so blocking. Seems that while the weather was cool, and we were all at a race, everyone just wanted to ride and talk about the winter. My teammates and I tried several times to bring the two leaders back, but every time that we rotated through the paceline, Chris B showed up at the front and slowed everyone down.
With two riders gone, we changed plans and went for third place. Setting up a good pace going into the final turn, I burnt my final half smoking match and got the hell out of the way. The good, Peter took sixth. The bad, Scott was far enough from the pack to be time gapped! The ugly, Mike R not showing up early enough to get some pics of us racing and gets me just trying to hold the pack on the final climb unsuccessfully.
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