Boulder Roubaix

Leave it up to me to make an incredibly hard race as hard as possible. 75 miles or so. 8 point something mile loops. With 2-3 miles or so of easy pavement. The rest… dirt roads, short sharp climbs, downhill 90 degree turns, false flats and as always… the pro’s.
After a few laps of racing things got gripy. I was closing gaps and after 3-5 minutes of all out riding it settled down a bit but 1/3 of the field was dropped. As we approached the same spot 1 lap later I knew “it” was going to happen now, “the” break of the day going to go. sure enough I started to dig in riding the 25-30 mph pace on the bumpy, packed dirt road. Then, a gap that was getting hard to close down. My self and Allen Krugoff crushed it but found our self’s in no-mans land fast and loosing ground to the leaders. My teammate Max had been in an early break and was hanging on but must have been really suffering now.
After a few minutes of chase our “main group settled down and then really slowed down. I accelerated a few times only to be chased. Finally they let me go. and I was off. With 30+ miles to go I wasn’t sure what I was doing but I knew I didn’t want to ride with a group that had given up. 10-12 miles alone was starting wear on me but I was fueling well and had already gotten a few from Lindsay. The best feed girl in the biz!! Then a saw the chasers I had a big gap now on the pack but being alone of this course it could get closed by an angry pack fast. It was only 3 riders. When they caught me the change of pace hurt but they let me sit on for 2 minutes until we reached the pavement. There I started pulling through and we made time on our chasers if there were any.
Towards the finish I was basically just putting on a show. A show of how to pedal with out actually pushing on the pedals! I was done. Allen accelerated on the final climb with 1 km to go almost making it but no go. Allen tock one other rider from out group to the line while myself and the other road a slow but all out effort to the line.
In the end 14th place was mine. I was pleased with the number of pro’s and not making “the move” I felt that it was a good effort. Now I had to get ready for the hills of CO springs tomorrow…