Tour de Dung #2, Sequim RR

I beat myself again. But I'm not too disappointed. At the beginning of the season I tried to downgrade and I just got 4th in a Cat 1-2 race. I'll take it.

The race was pretty bizarre. It seems as if my image in the eyes of the other racers has gotten to be as big as the Stay-puft marshmallow man. So we had a strategy at the beginning of the race and part of the strategy was for me to watch Beth. I know that Beth likes to attack early so I was actually dreading an early attack. The refs told us we were neutral until the top of the first hill and Beth lets out a groan "are you sure? We didn't do that last time". This was a bad sign. So we go up the first hill and I lead just for fun. Then I rotate to the back where Beth is. I really like the back. A couple minutes later Beth is out of her saddle moving up the side. Here we go! I grabbed the wheel and we were off the front. I came around and took and a "good faith" pull and she let me pull a little and then came with a vicious counter attack. So much for Ms. Nice Guy. The next thing I knew Allison and Trish B had joined us. So now they are rotating and I'm cooked. Due to my reputation from the last Sequim I didn't get any grace period. They immediately started yelling at me for not pulling. I stayed silent for a while, mostly because I couldn't breathe.

So I'm not pulling because I really don't see any point. We have got almost the whole race to do and all of these riders are stronger than me. Not a good situation but probably a good strategy to use against sprinters. My teammate (another sprinter) was back in the pack but there was no hope of them catching because we had all of the strongest riders.

So I wasn't pulling because I really didn't trust the other riders not to attack me. Then they found out we had a 4 minute lead and they all sat up and we started going 10 mph and I agreed to pull. I took a few turns before I decided that maybe they weren't going to attack me. So then I took "regular" pulls which meant I pulled maybe 3-5 times and then took a break for a couple of turns. They did not like the breaks at all and I was cursed at and spit on. Welcome to bigtime racing I guess. I remember watching the Olympics and seeing one of the girls spit in the other girls lane before the competition. Wow I'm really flattered now. (heavy sarcasm)

It seemed odd that they were so obsessed with making me pull since I haven't won any races recently and I am not anywhere near as strong as them. I was barraged with insults - except from Allison who tried to get them to shut up.

So I thought things were going OK. Occasionally someone would try to escape but the other riders didn't seem to have much acceleration. I was getting tired which I'm sure they were too but they were also chatting so I knew they weren't that tired. A couple of times I stood up in the back to stretch and there was an immediate reaction. They actually though I was going to attack.
Unfortunately things didn't work out for me. I was drinking aggressively to extend my strength but I had mixed my drink bottles too strongly and had started throwing up on any extended efforts. I was doomed at that point. I couldn't pull through and I told them why so someone went for the attack. It didn't matter at that point for me though.

I rode the last lap alone and pretty miserable just pushing hard enough not to get sick and managed to take 4th. My best placing since the Kent Criterium a few years ago where there were only 4 riders to start with.