Today I got up early and went to a church down the street for mass. After that, I walked back to the house and got ready for my race. Today's race was about half an hour away. When we got there, it started raining hard, so I just got dressed in the car and waited it out. 20 minutes before my race the rain stopped, but the roads were slick. The course consisted of a long uphill and some flat, windy roads. There were 76 starters in this race and I was feeling very confident. There were 10 laps and for the first 7 laps I was feeling really strong and I was controlling the front of the race. I could see that I was stringing out the field around the corners and I just felt great.
Going through a corner on the 7th lap though my wheel hit some gravel and I slid out. It was one of those crashes where everything goes slow mo and you are thinking about how bad this is gonna be when your body slides against the pavement. Well, I got up, made sure my bike was o.k., and started chasing. The thing is, the pack was GONE when I got up, I knew that there was no chance of catching back up, but there could be some dropped kids up the road that I could pass up. My rule of thumb is that I will always go hard even when I'm dropped until I get pulled. I caught up to 4 dropped kids up the road and then dropped them and moved up to one more kid up the road who I also dropped. I got to do all 10 laps and I finished 39th. Not the best result, but I finished and did my best.
CORRECTION: The ex-pro rider who I rode the Tour of Flanders course with is NOT in his early thirties. He turned 29 two days ago and his name is spelled Jered. I also found out that he only weighs 155 pounds (hes a lot taller than me) and can produce 400 watts for 20 minutes. No wonder my ride was hard with him.
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