On the box

I came close to the "W" yesterday but settled for 2nd in the Cat. 3 race (aka " 2nd tallest midget in the circus") at the first Ontario Cup road race of the season. First time ever in a bike race on the podium - they made us raise hands like that...weird!

Anyway for those of you dying to find out how it played out...there was a break of 4 dudes 1:45 up the road with one lap to go. In the first few km of the last lap it looked like the break had disintegrated as a couple of guys were coming back - we had heard there was still one guy holding the gap.

In any case, the front of the race was still 1:45 up and no one seemed overly concerned with catching him for the win so I attacked into a stiff headwind with 15km to go and had a couple of guys follow me. I let them take a couple of turns and it became obvious that they weren't going to be able to help my cause a great deal so I punched it again up a sharp little hill and in doing so ended up alone for the chase with a :30-:45 gap on the bunch.

After about 8km of rolling hills I could finally get a good idea of where the lead was and that I was closing on him. With just over 4km to go we made a final right hand turn and I timed the gap at :40. We had a nice tailwind on this last stretch so deep down I knew it would be next to impossible to close the gap - everyone is good in a tailwind! But I put 'er in the "11" anyway, put my head down and suffered to the line...down :21. I ran out of real estate but kudos to the dude who held on after dangling out front for a good while. Despite (or maybe because of) his pink, purple and blue pastel coloured cycling kit - he toughed it out for the top step.

This bike racing is fun, always new lessons to be learned. It's keeping me busy and fit while we wait for the ice to thaw on the lakes and the start of the real season of racing!