Originally Posted by dz_nuzz

Bittersweet end to my "season" (Still have GMSR upcoming but I am doing that more as a participation race than a "I am going to crush this").

Tokeneke P1 + 2 (4th Cat1, 7th overall). This was an exceedingly strange race. They separated the fields with prize money and podiums, both fields were small (about 15 each) but we raced together. This was also the NE regional championship but apparently there was not good communication and the regional championship was a combined 1 and 2 field. They need to be more specific about how this stuff works out or just give us a combined field and say "Have at it".

Anyways, teammate got into the early break and spent about half the race OTF with me patrolling the field and shutting down break attempts. Eventually the field was animated enough to cut down the time from a high of 2:30. This is where it gets odd. J-Pow was in the field and he decided to animate the race with some attacks. Okay, cool, but of course he animates it with some questionable attacks extremely close to the feed zone. We end up getting a field split and catch up to my teammate and the two other breakaway riders and proceed to drill it for the next 2 laps until we are down to about 8 of us.

We take turns punching, counter punching and eventually just tiring ourselves out, lucky for me my teammate was able to rally and stick with this move after having spent most of the race in a break.

We more or less came to the last climb together with the two guys who had been smart and sat back while the attack flew took off about halfway up the ~5 minute finishing climb. Our local legend / power house Tim goes on after them with me simply suffering on his wheel, I pop with about a minute to go left in the climb, my teammate comes around me and jumps on Tim's wheel and Tim drags him and two others up to the pair that attacked. My teammate ends up coming around Tim at the end at 500M to go and ends up getting 4th in the sprint while I trail in behind by about 30 seconds for my 4th/7th place.

Teammate gets 2nd for New England overall which made me extremely happy, but I am kicking myself for not having more in the tank going up that last climb to help him out in the end and nab a better place for myself.

Weird race, could have gone better, could have gone worse.