I'd never done a road race before so this was a new experience for me.

During the break between the TT and the road race, the wind picked up quite a bit and we were now in a much more exposed area. I found out that we would be going counter clockwise which I wasn't expecting. There is a duathlon held here every year and we always go clockwise for that.

Spent the time before the race relaxing as much as possible but I also had to take the wheel cover off both bikes and make a few other swaps. Then my rear brake was all messed up - the calipers wouldn't open wide enough to let the wheel through. I had to release the cable and open things up by hand and set it up again. No idea how that would have changed.

All the racers started at the same time, elite, sport, beginner, men and women (about 25 in all). The pace started out a bit high but not all that bad. After about 5 mins I found myself riding about mid pack, right behind the guy that had the second fastest TT and is generally considered the strongest rider around here. I figured that was a good place to be. About half way around the first lap the pace started to pick up on a downhill/down wind stretch and I made the comment to the guy riding beside me that I guess we weren't going to get an easy opening lap. Shortly after that we made a swing around to the left back towards the start/finish and started going up a hill that is about 700 meters long. It's not steep by any stretch but we had a pretty strong cross/headwind from the left. Right about when this happened Cory (previously mentioned strong rider) started paying attention and moved his way toward the front of the pack - as if he was sensing something about to happen. Sure enough, as he got close to the front all hell broke loose. The elites took off and blew the back apart. I and a couple of the others tried to stay with them over the top but it wasn't happening. I was about 5 seconds behind one guy (Matt) and another guy was happy to let me drag him up the hill... As we got over the top of the hill I put down a bit of an effort to catch back onto Matt's wheel so that at least 3 of us could work together. We finished off the lap together. Lap 1 - 238/280 AP/NP - 16:40

Starting lap 2 we were about 20 seconds down on the main pack of about 8 guys (some elite - some sport). We started rotating in a decent little group to see if we could get back on. Most of the lap was at a pretty hard effort and we got to within about 5 seconds of them by the base of the hill at the end of the lap, only to have them blow us off up the hill again. We had gotten so close that the 3 of us tried hard to latch onto the group and ended up a bit separated by the end of the lap. Lap 2 - 270/281w - 16:28 (ouch)

A few mins into lap 3 the 3 of us had regrouped and then half way through the lap we picked up a 4th guy that had been spit out of the main group. Normally this would be good but he was a bit stronger than Matt and I and he and the other guy from our threesome dropped Matt and I on that same damned hill. Lap 3 - 238/251 - 17:10

At the start of lap 4 I tried to bridge up to the other two guys but couldn't quite make it and eventually sat up and waited for Matt. The two of us finished the lap together although I had to wait for him a bit over the top of the hill. Lap 4 - 218/236 - 18:24

Lap 5 I started thinking about the finish. Matt had beaten me in the TT by something like 50 seconds and he seemed to be starting to struggle a bit. When we hit the hill I put a steady effort into getting up it and by the time I got to the top I had about a 10-15 second gap and I decided to go for broke and TT the last lap to see if I could make up the difference from the morning TT. I figured I would either make it or blow up trying. Lap 5 - 215/225 - 18:47

Lap 6 was just put my head down and go as hard as I could manage. I looked back a few times and the gap seemed to be growing so the motivation to keep pushing was there. Got to the hill and just gave it what I had - I was ready to puke at this point. Lap 6 - 240/246 - 17:55

In the end I ended up putting enough time in to Matt to beat him over all by 15 seconds for 5th and was 7 seconds out of 4th. Avg speed for the road race was faster than the TT.

Total time: 1:45:59, AP 235, NP 254, Avg speed 34.2 km/hr

I had a total blast doing this race. The combined time of the TT and RR made it interesting and forced me to work harder. It would have been easy to just cruise that last lap and stay ahead of Matt otherwise.

http://www.strava.com/activities/75763828

Nothing really.

Lack of roadie power. :)