Originally Posted by daneil

This Sunday really was a mess. As I stayed in the front 15 for the entire race let me try to shed some light on the events of the morning. There are in the usual PP Cat 5 field more then a few racers with little to no pack riding experience. These riders cannot hold a line and often spend much of the race riding their brakes. Every now and then one of them will break off the front and try to put time on the group on either the downhill or the end of the straight by the bandshell. These breaks never last and often end with the riders getting spit out the back, which is fine by me. So that's how the pack is usually organized, by the time the sprint comes (and it's almost always a sprint) the inexperienced guys are all off the back which allows for a pretty nice sprint coming into 200m to the line.

The problem this weekend was that when the head squirrel started getting tired after the downhill leading into the false flat and the short slightly uphill finish he began to swing wildly back and forth across the road. It was pretty much impossible to pass the kid because he was pulling quite sharply across the roadway. The about 100m from the line just as myself and the riders behind me (10th -15th in the field) were fully winding up the sprint and dropping down that last gear they all started coasting. Suddenly there was a line across the road with riders pulling down from 30-32 to 20 mph.

I've never seen anything like it. 100m from the line and they all stopped. It was one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. It ended the race on a sour note for me, 10th-11th would have been fine with me if I had lost in the sprint, but I had plenty more left. Oh well, I don't mean to complain and honestly this was my last race as a 5 so it's on to better and safer races for me.