Did the final Red Kite p1/2 crit yesterday. 23 in the field, I had a few teammates. A local sprinter was there, so the plan was to make him work hard, basically. Our sprinter was marked by the other sprinter there, which we used to our advantage.
After the first initial attack that was brought back in the first five minutes, I attacked from the back of the group and quickly got a gap, joined by 3 or 4 guys including @
Ygduf. There were 3 guys from Mikes Devo team, two from Sun Power, and a few random dudes, then me & @
Ygduf.
We worked well together, with a few exceptions. I had to "coach" some of the guys in the group not to sprint for primes (just crappy wine anyway), and got yelled at for not working enough in the group lol. I think that was because @
Ygduf was sitting on and they thought it was me. I retorted "MAN I STARTED THIS ****ING BREAK, THIS IS MY BREAK, I'M WORKING TO MAKE IT STICK DAMMIT!!" That rant was followed up with a more measured/lower-volume line about how I am working and I want this break to stick, so let's keep working together.
But it really pissed me off that I was doing a ton of work in the break, never skipping a pull, and still got yelled at!
With 20 mins to go we lapped what was left of the field, which I wanted since I had more strong teammates there that could help with a leadout. Once we lapped things were relatively calm, no big attacks from the lappers. I made a mental note of the #'s of the Mikes guys, in case they tried to get away again.
Coming in to the final lap I was getting a leadout from two of our strongest guys, including our top sprinter. They did pretty well, but there were guys who had gotten lapped that decided to try and sprint anyway and got in the way.. the leadout wasn't quite fast enough (didn't come over the top of everyone else), so we came in to the last corner wide and took a weird line.. I had a clear shot at the line and did a good 245m sprint, but the line was 250m away..
I could tell nobody around me was coming up, but someone on the far side of the road came from behind and snuck through for the win.. I got 2nd.
Heartbreaking.
Adding insult to injury, the guy who won didn't work as much as everyone else in the break, sat on a bunch. To his credit, that's probably why he won! There's no prize for doing a ton of work in a break.. all that matters is who crossed the line first.
I know I shouldn't complain about getting 2nd, but when you're that close to 1st and have a team working for you, it's painful.