Went out to the Barrio Logan GP yesterday. I was course marshaling, as our club puts on this race, and standing in the rain and wind had me really discouraged, and I was thinking about just not even starting. The rain died down and the roads dried up a bit, and my teammates talked me into kitting up.
Had a bit too short of a warmup, and was still carrying a negative attitude of "I don't even really want to be here", so when a few guys set a hard race from the gun I was not happy. I'd just been following, but trying to position aggressively and not let anything go without the team. Mostly just sat 2nd and 3rd wheel to make sure the field didn't split without me. Luckily, my teammate followed an early counter attack to the hard pace while I was at the front and I chilled a bit to make sure they got a gap. A few guys were still trying to work, but I'd sit on 2nd wheel and then just pull at just a bit under threshold whenever I was at the front. Just hard enough that no one wanted to come around, but easy enough to let the gap grow, taking nice wide lines through the corners to discourage anyone from diving by. Kept doing that, and covering any attack attempts. About half way through the race, they had a sizeable gap, and one of the four in the initial break got dropped, which helped our odds a bit more. I let myself shuffle back into the pack, as my legs were burning from the lack of proper warmup.
My teammate ended up winning out of the break by a hair. I wanted to contest the field sprint for 4th, but just as I was about to launch, the guy in front of me bobbled and hit his brakes a bit. My only exit was to the left, and I knew my other teammate was back there, so I opted to slow down instead. Luckily, he launched just after that and made it to the line for 4th.
Moral of the story for me was that even when my attitude stinks, I need to give my all to the race. Also, the NP was lower than I thought it would be, telling me that I should be able to push harder even though it felt tough as it was.