Here's my report.

35+ 1/2/3 - 2 laps (86 miles).

Don't be fooled by the name, Dunnigan Hills is the flatest road race I've ever done. There were many riders who I had never seen before, the kind of guys who never go near a race with anything resembling an actual hill.

This was another of those wake up at 5AM, out the door by 5:30 races that my wife hates so much. Then, for some unknown reason, all of the starts were delayed nearly an hour (how many times did I hear "I could have slept an extra.......")

When we finally rolled out, as a joke, I attacked on the overpass about 0.1 miles after we rolled out and I got a gap. I pushed it for a little while and built up about a 1 minute advantage. I really didn't want to ride nearly 90 miles solo and was really hoping a small group would bridge up to me, but after about 8 miles I could see the whole pack was only about 30 seconds back, so I sat up and rejoined the pack.

As the race went on, I was reminded why I hate flat road races so much. I usually end up about 40-50 people back on a narrow road with riders all across the road and no room to pass, so if anyone attacks, I'm stuck back in traffic and can't do anything about it. It took a few miles of riding on the windy side of the road near the shoulder to move back up into the top 5 or so.

Me and several other riders started attacking, if not to get away then hopefully to shed a few of the hangers on before the inevitable sprint finish. Dropping guys is SOOOO much harder in a flat race!!!
I was never able to get away (why are people always chasing me down?), but after about 40 miles a few riders who had some teammates were able to launch a successful breakaway.

I wasn't interested in helping drag the peloton back to the break, but was instead trying to break away, either solo or with a small group and bridge up to it. Then in the middle of one of my attempts, we came up to a pothole. I went right, the guy on my wheel went left and clipped his teammate, the blogger king's front wheel sending him to the pavement at about 32mph. To make matters worse, someone about 20 riders back didn't see this and plowed into him at full speed. I heard that he may have a broken collerbone, but I sure hope it's not that bad.

I started coasting at this point to see if he would get up and back in the race, but he was still down and the other riders all started going by. We soft pedaled for about 1 mile, then guys started attacking again, so it was back on. Non stop attacks by about 5 or 6 of us didn't manage to break us free, but this (in addition to the crash) had our chase pack town to about 12 riders, and we were bringing back the breakaway. We caught the break with about 5 miles to go and after several sprint, sit, sprint, sit intervals everyone was content to soft pedal and wait for the last 500M - overpass to flat road finish.

I didn't get on a very good wheel as we started the sprint up the overpass (at least it was a bit of a hill) and over and I had to go around and try to move up on the outside of the pack to the finish. Since sprinting is not a real strength of mine, I was happy to finish 9th out of the 15 or so in the sprint.

It was fun, but exhausting and I don't think I'll be back next year.

Next weekend is the University Circuit Race in Santa Cruz with a 400 foot climb on every 3 mile lap. Now that's my kind of course!