Hunter Classic cat 4, 17th of 66. Big sprint finish of 32 guys after 77 miles / 4100 feet.
Hot and crowded. I've done all 4 editions of this race and there's been a crash in 3 of them. The problem is that the climbs aren't hard enough to drop everyone, but the race is long enough that guys get really gassed and wobbly by the end (myself included).
Stayed with the front group throughout. Dropped a bottle at about mile 20 and as a result was cramping pretty badly by the last climb.
With about 10 miles to go, somehow 2 guys snuck away and got in front of the pace moto. This led to a lot of conversation: "there's two guys away! " "no there's not, the moto is right there!" etc. In any event, we didn't chase and they stayed away.
With about 8 miles to go, cruising along at about 25 mph, the guy in front of me swerved, hit my front wheel, and my life flashed before my eyes. I unclipped both feet and made pontoons sliding down the road. By some miracle I didn't go down, although I'm pretty sure guys went down behind me. By the time I clipped back in I had gotten gapped by maybe 10-15 seconds. I hammered to get back on for what felt like about 2 hours. Looking at Strava it was about 4 minutes. I suffered greatly. Just when I was about to throw in the towel, the moto ref took pity and sort of paced me back, which might have been fun if I wasn't half dead and the motorcycle carburetor had been tuned recently. I was very psyched to get back on, but by this point I was cramping really badly and had burned an entire matchbook.
I tried something new that I have been thinking about recently: the more it hurt, the more I tried to smile. I actually think it helped, as stupid as it sounds.
Anyway, the sprint got all messed up because a guy tried to go at about 1k, was all over the road, and the moto ref sent him back. By the time that got sorted it was 300m to go. I sort of mailed in the sprint and finished in the middle of the group.