Originally Posted by mattm

Tour of Walla Walla Stage Race Cat 4 - TT (38th), Crit (5th), RR (14th).

Saturday 9.3 mi TT: passed my 30 second man/carrot, but got passed once. Need to work on the TTing..

Saturday Crit: Points, mofo, I got points. 90-something Cat 4's in a 25-minute crit with 6 turns. Fun stuff, I love crits. Zero crashes, btw.

Sunday RR: 58 miles, 3km uphill finish (5%). One kinda bad crash at 30-35 mph, btw.

Executed a 12 mile solo breakaway, though it was perhaps ill-timed at 9 miles into ~60 mile race. Pack was slow so I went to see what happened.

The best part about the break was getting time checks from the moto guy - first one after a few minutes was "25 seconds, and no attacks." Cool, I attacked my attack, and got a 2nd wind. The winding roads & rolling hills of the course allowed me to get out of sight a few times, so in the back of my head I was thinking maybe there was hope? Well not really, but how long could I stick this?

5-10 minutes later, the time check was "35 seconds, still no response."

At points I sat up and looked back, but the pack was so far away that after coasting for few seconds I'd just put in another dig, and get going again. Moto guy was even saying "you might as well go for it!" when I told him I was throwing in the towel.

The next time check was "45 seconds, but they're responding." After about 12 miles/35 minutes I hit the 3 km climb (course was a loop) and went back into the pack. Only I couldn't rest just yet - there was still 2.5 km of the 5% grade until I could rest. Ouch. Held on, but had to really fight for stay in the pack. (thanks Hida for the words of encouragement!)

Once back in the pack we rode around in a big group ride for 30-something miles, then the last 5k were pretty animated.

Pack splits into two groups on the 3km finish climb, finished at the back of the first one. Ugh, that hurt.

The weekend was a blast, got to race with forrest_m, Hida, and a bunch of other folks.