Meh. Rock Hill Masters 4/5 Road Race

From the topo map, this course looked like a great chance to get in a selection or at least have a spread out field but that didn't happen. Two hours of riding in which I thought I raced well (stayed near the front, attacked a couple of times--in vain) all came down to a humungous shoulder-to-shoulder bunch sprint.

Had I done some course recon I would have known about the final turn about 500m before the line and would have played that one better but blah blah blah the bottom line is that I need to work on sprinting if I'm going to win races like this. Things got a bit sketchy there at the end with handlebars touching and people crossing the yellow line early and such so as the herd thundered toward the line and I could see I wasn't going to finish in the points I just sat up.

The result of this race has bothered me for the last two days. Lessons learned: always always always know the run-in to the finish and never give up during the sprint. Oh yeah and I need to either earn myself some sprinting legs and tactics or find some races where there are some long climbs. Unfortunately, my next big races (Dragon's Challenge Omnium in Fayetteville NC) looks like more of the same mind-numbing bunch sprints. Arghhh.

Oh yeah, here's a picture from the criterium on Saturday. I'm the guy in blue-grey on the right who is about to end up getting his arse kicked in the sprint: