We can all learn some lessons from the 4 race at Kirkwood this past weekend. For starters, if you want to block for a teammate on a breakaway, all you have to do is ride like 95% of the Tuesday night Drives Ride. Act like you just don't quite have what it takes to pull through to the front, but refuse to drop out of rotation. Andrew Satinsky nailed that act this weekend, allowing me to get enough of a gap on a two-man break that I thought we might be able to stay away.
Which brings us to lesson two: Know the guy next to you. If he makes you a little nervous, ignore it. It's a 4 race, for crying out loud. Everybody is a little shaky on race day. But if he makes you a lot nervous, trust your gut. He's probably going to half-wheel you down a hill and put you into the split-rail fence at the bottom. By the time we got bikes untangled and got rolling, the main field had us in their sights again, and the break was over. Time to sit up and get some rest before the inevitable bunch sprint, right?
Wrong. Lesson three: The punishment WILL fit the crime. Andrew was pretty harshly punished for his excellent teamwork, and got hung out to dry on the front of the pack for the better part of a lap. On a pretty windy day, no less. By the time we pulled on to the final straight, a mile long false flat into a steady headwind, our fate was sealed. I didn't have enough left in my legs to bring the pace up and string things out, so when I looked back at 1k to go and saw Andrew over my shoulder with the rest of the field spread 6-deep across both lanes just behind him, I knew our fate was sealed. God bless him for trying, though.
And after he went for it, and the pack engulfed us, and we chatted across the finish line into 22nd and 23rd places, there were a few LHLs in the trunk to take some of the sting out of bitter, bitter defeat.
We'll conclude today's exercise with lesson four: If you're going to lose, do it in good company. It also doesn't hurt to know that there's a bushel of steamed crabs waiting for you just a 15 mile ride away, to know that you're going to spend the evening breathing clean suburban air tinged with horse manure instead of whatever it is that fills the Delaware, and that in the morning you're going to ride home shoulder to shoulder with people you CAN trust not to edge you off the road.
Oh, and smores. Smores help too.
