I had only had one banana to eat for breakfast; I had meant to eat more, but I hadn't had time. As a result, I was not feeling particularly strong. After all, I was still riding the mountain bike(explanation to follow in a subsequent post), and I had decided to keep my gearing to two gears: middle or big ring in the front, and my 12 tooth sprocket in the back. It made things simpler, and I could still spin fast enough to get up the hills, and that way it made shifting simpler. At the start, a bunch of riders mentioned that I had the upper hand today, with my better gripping tires.
We had strategized to have repeated attacks off the front, and Tommy shot off the front from the start. Tommy held the lead for the first lap, which broke the field up very quickly. I was not so quick out of the gates. I took a few pedal strokes to clip in, and I wasn't feeling strong. I held on to the back of the pack. Nick attacked next, and led the field for pretty much the whole rest of the race. Joe kept his place in third position. Occasionally I would get up in the top 8 riders, but I usually would get passed on the finishing stretch. Later in the race, I wasn't feeling like I had the upper hand. I entertained thoughts of dropping off the back so far I got lapped, and then placed. My glasses fogged up several times, often so bad that I had to look over the tops to see. I took the opportunity during one stretch on the finish when I was off the back to take my glasses off and wipe the insides with my glove. That cleared up my view for a while; it continued to fog a bit, but not as bad. As a result of the fogging, the rain, and the fact that the officials moved the clock, I had no idea how long into the race we were.
I knew I had no chance for the primes anyway, so I pretty much waited until I heard the bell ring for the third time, and then punched it on the back downhill stretch, spinning fast, but the field wasn't going too fast. I got into second position, and the guy in front of me took the uphill corner too fast, and went off into the grass. I was pretty sure it was the last lap, but I wasn't actually convinced. I also was prettty sure that a break had been made at some point, so I wasn't actually in first place. I didn't think I could maintain my lead on the field, since I was not feeling my best, and it was probably the last lap. However, I held on, and placed fourth! Even after I crossed the finish line, I still wasn't sure we were done, but no one was passing me, so I kept going and slowed down for the cool down lap, where I talked with Joe about our race, and met up with Nick, who had apparently crashed with two laps to go, off the front. He was reasonably angry about crashing and not winning.
We rolled back to our spectating team, who were very congratulatory for our efforts. I was talking with Axie, who asked me if I was just toying with the D field, by staying at the back for most of the race. I was not, I was actually pretty tired. I guess I got my second legs with about 6 mins to go. As Axie and I turned around, a GVSU B girl barreled into me and my front wheel. She fell to the ground, and I checked to make sure she and her bike were ok. It was then that I noticed the crash had caused my front wheel to "potato chip". That's kind of like taco-ing, but less severe. Either way, it was un-ridable. I remembered that someone had mentioned to me Saturday that some of my spokes were a little loose. So! Now I'm in the market for a new mountain bike front wheel, a new Trek frame(explanation to follow in a subsequent post), a new road crank, a front mountain bike fork, and most of a new component group. Yay!
Oh yeah, and it was raining for the whole race.
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