Old age and treachery, and a little bit of power

A few more motors showed up to the luxury practice crit last night. A bit more wind and a couple of guys with more under the hood than I can bring, and it became clear immediately that I was in for an hour of suffering. After two "easy" laps, three of us rolled off the front and stayed there for the next 50 minutes with the hammer down.

A quick side note about "easy" laps. Who do they think they are fooling? Why are these things always excuses to show what a bad ass you are by making your "easy" the equivalent of our anaerobic threshold? On the first "easy" lap, I'm sitting third wheel into the wind, in the perfect draft, and pushing 300+ watts just to hang on.

In any event, one of the guys I'm with is apparently a mountain biker. Stupid strong, but he takes weird lines in the corners, doesn't know how to pull off, and doesn't understand a cross wind. But he just generally pulls for extended periods at a time so I don't complain. The other guys is fairly strong too, but constantly tries weak attacks, and insists on blowing his nose and spitting while at the front. I quickly decide I'll pull through when they ask, but I'm not about to match the show of force. And I'm damn tired. So I sit in, try to avoid the snot rockets, and take my turn at the front as little as possible.

With two laps to go, we've picked up a few lapped riders, and a guy attacks. My reaction, like always, is to chase. Somehow my brain catches up to my legs and tells me to sit up in the headwind section. No one pulls around, but the guy doesn't get very far and it's clear we'll catch him in the sprint. On the next turn, I take a super tight line that no one can follow, and then move over and slot in 3rd wheel. I sit there until the final turn. The power house goes early and gaps the guy in front of me, so I'm about 20m back with 100m to go. Maybe because I feel bad, I gradually build up the sprint rather than jumping on it hard, which allows me to hit top speed right as everyone else is dying. With about 10m to go, I move by the power house at a fairly rapid pace and win by 2 or 3 bike lengths.

As much as the roadie crap can annoy me, that is a cool thing about racing on the road. I was only the 2nd or probably 3rd strongest guy there, but I won the sprint going away just by playing it a bit smarter.

Of course, at the mountain bike race next weekend, both of those guys will probably destroy me.