Last Race and Some Mountain Training

Rode the last road race of the Colorado season yesterday. Great battle out on the Colorado farm lands. Belgian style with le perfume du manure and lots of wind. Got stuck in a bad position when the front group went in the combined p/1/2/3/masters 35+/women 1/2 field. Made the 2nd chase group after burying myself only to look back and see that the rest of the field was nowhere in sight. On th last lap, a DU rider went up the road. I watched for a reaction from the group but it was obvious they were blown. I attacked hard out to the left, bridged up and we rode together for the rest of the race. Probably about a 3-4min lead ahead of the group. With 500m to go, the rider with me tried to break me but getting out of the saddle with me on his wheel. I was right on it. He tried it again, and i was on it. With about 200m to go, I jumped and gave everything out to the far right(we were on the left side of the road. He wasn't able to follow my sprint and I was able to comfortably sit up with 4 bike lengths to go as I had a 4-5bike length lead. Now I would expect officials would get these results right. But ohh contraire...I was recorded as 7th overall, not 6th with the DU guy beating me. I didn't even bother to check the results for fear of a mistake. I only discovered it last night online. Policy is you can't contest after leaving race site. Stupid.

After we finished the DU rider told me he thought he could drop me. What he didn't know was I knew he was the stronger rider so I played it to look more fatigue and took shorter pull towards the end. Then when he decided to lead it out I knew I had it b/c he wasn't going to drop me by jumping out of the saddle. So for all of you trying to drop someone at the end, make the jump count. With the limited distance left, you have nothing to lose if you don't empty the tank. I waited till he sat after giving it a 2nd go, knowing he is going to need a little recovery and then unleashed. It worked and it was sweet after the work throughout the day.

Now onto fun riding. Eric Kenny and I did a nice 150k loop up to Estes Park via Loveland/CO-34 then down CO-36. Plan was to continue on CO-7 to Ward but we were already at 3.5 hours in Estes. The loop I described would be a great day. Legs felt pretty good today and the weather was perfect.

Here are some photos...they were all taken while riding