Malabar Farms and Lynchburg

Another race weekend has come and gone. Saturday we started with a hilly circuit/road race about an hour north of my house. The course was a tough one with 1 long climb and very rolly terrain. We were 4 strong.... Jimmy Mac, Tim, Ryan and myself... I was a full go for helping the team out today as the finish was halfway up the damn climb again... so I just did what I could and survived the climb. Tim ended up getting away in a 3 man break and that was pretty much the race. On the last lap Ryan jumped away with another guy and I was just kinda chillin in the field until Jeff B from Roadhouse attacked... I went up to him and we had a pretty good gap. We ended up linking up with Ryan's group about 4 miles later and we could actually see the break now. With about 3 miles to go the field was somehow bringing us back and we were bringing the break back. I told Ryan to save his legs and sit on and I drove our group until the hill. Tim's group stayed away with Tim finishing 3rd. And amazingly we got caught as soon as we hit the bottom of the hill... Although it didn't matter as Ryan had fresh legs and dusted everyone up the hill for 4th. I came unglued and crawled in for 15th.
Sunday we traveled to Lynchburg Ohio where the terrain was flat... YES!! I was overly excited about that and with 5 guys A&F was in full effect. Boss man Chad told us the plan was to have 2 of us in the break and 1 of them must be me... Sounds good to me.. the course was a flat 8 mile loop and the winds were like 20mph.... love it! I was a bit excited that there were no hills and wasted no time getting to work in the 65 mile race. 2 guys had slipped away about 1 mile into the race and 2 miles in I was ready to go.... I attacked and Tim came with me... The weather was turning on us as we rode into a storm... As the rain started dumping Tim and I got caught but continued to drill it in the crosswind to blow the race apart. The race stayed aggressive and coming around for the 1st time I attacked again and 4 others came with me. We layed it down pretty hard into the headwind and we had a good gap straight away. We were 5 riders from 5 different teams including 1 from Roadhouse. We worked well together and a couple laps later we were totally out of sight from the field. With 2 laps to go Kevin Attkisson from Roadhouse and my teammate Ryan finally caught up to us after chasing for a couple laps. Kevin attacked immediately and we dumped a few guys from the break. We were now 6, 2 A&F, 2 Roahouse and 2 lone guys. The 2 loners decided they weren't going to work anymore and the 4 of us just rolled through. Things were pretty calm the last lap and coming into the last 4 miles I was licking my chops as I knew I was the fastest guy in the break. BUT, there's always a but... I started to feel a slow leak in my rear wheel....not good. With 2 miles ago I was getting really low and it was decision time. My thoughts were Kevin is the 2nd fastest guy and he seemed content with trying to let his teammate go up the road and stay with me... so here were my thoughts: Option 1 - keep it together and sprint everyone with a flat? or Option 2 - Let Ryan roll up the road with the other Roadhouse guy and keep Kevin with me... and roll the dice with Ryan beating the other guy. Tough decision...My ego said option 1(of course), but option 2 seemed smarter.... so with 1km to go my tire was pretty flat and I choose option 2. We rolled the dice but we came up short and Ryan got beat at the line and finished 2nd. I finished on a flat in 5th. Very frustrating day as I could smell the victory.. but I guess that's racing.. Did I make the right decision??????? guess we'll never know...

m@